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Outlines of Psychology 



'J^^J^^o 



Outlines of Psychology 



AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE 
WITH SOME PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 



BY 



JOSIAH ROYCE, Ph.D., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



Wein fork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1903 

^11 rights reserved 




MY 25 1903 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS a^ XXo. No. 

^ D i Is Lj- " 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1903, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1903. 



J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

A NUMBER of years since I was a contributor to a 
large volume entitled, In Sichtess and in Health — the 
joint work of a number of authors. The volume was 
intended as a popular guide regarding various aspects 
of public and private hygiene, of nursing, and of related 
topics. The treatise, however, contained introductory 
statements, composed by different writers, and setting 
forth the most general outlines of Anatomy, of Physi- 
ology and of Psychology. It was my own task merely 
to contribute to this volume the sketch of some of the 
elementary principles and practical applications of Psy- 
chology. The later essays of the volume were the work 
of physicians. The introductory statements were ac- 
cordingly very strictly hmited, as to their plan and as 
to their contents, by their relation to the highly practical 
treatise in which they formed so subordinate a part. 

By the consent of the publishers of the work thus 
prepared, I have been able to use the material of this, 
my former very summary sketch of Psychology, as the 
core of the present elementary book. I have indeed 
revised such of the former discussion as I here use ; and 
I have added a proportionately large amount of new 
text, and have endeavoured to give the present volume its 
own unity. What remains from the original sketch is, 
however, especially the tendency to make a number of 
practical applications of psychological theory at various 



VI PREFACE 

places in my discussion — a tendency which may be of 
service to some readers who, like myself, are fond of 
defining a good many of the problems of teaching, and 
of practical life, more or less in psychological terms, so 
far as they are able to do so. Otherwise, as I hope, the 
present work speaks for itself. 

This is not a book upon the Philosophy of Mind, nor 
does it deal with any philosophical problems. Such 
problems I have indeed discussed at length in other pub- 
lications of my own. But the reader of my various 
philosophical inquiries will already know that I make a 
sharp difference between the business of the student of 
philosophy and that of the psychologist. In the present 
volume, I am concerned solely with certain problems of 
the natural history of mind ; metaphysical issues are here 
not at all in question. On the other hand, this volume 
is indeed no effort to summarise the more technical 
results of modern Experimental Psychology, although I 
believe thoroughly in the importance of Experimental 
Psychology, and personally take no small interest in fol- 
lowing, so far as I can, the labours of my colleagues of 
the laboratories ; and although I hope that this book 
shows a good many signs of my having profited by such 
an interest. My plan has led me, however, to concern 
myself here with elementary principles rather than with 
technical details, and to attempt, to some extent, practi- 
cal applications of these principles, rather than state- 
ments of the fascinating, but complex special researches 
of recent laboratory Psychology. 



PREFACE vil 

For the same reason, this volume makes no attempt 
to deal with the special Psychology of the senses, with 
the details of the theory of space-perception, or with 
any of the other special regions where modern Experi- 
mental Psychology has already won its greatest triumphs. 
I do not, indeed, undervalue what has been accorapHshed 
in those fields. But I have no desire to try to compete 
with the numerous recent expositions in which the later 
conquests of Experimental Psychology have been sum- 
marised. On the contrary, I hope that my reader's 
curiosity may be aroused in such wise that he may be 
led to look elsewhere for what I do not pretend to give 
him. My own purpose, and my chosen limitations, 
assign to me another task. 

I presuppose, then, a serious reader, but not one 
trained either in experimental methods, or in philo- 
sophical inquiries. I try to tell him a few things that 
seem to me important, regarding the most fundamental 
and general processes, laws, and conditions of mental 
life. I say nothing whatever about the philosophical 
problem of the relations of mind and body, and nothing 
about the true place of mind in the universe. Mean- 
while, I try to view the matters here in question in a 
perspective which is of my own choosing. The treat- 
ment of mental phenomena, under the three heads of 
Sensitiveness, Docility, and Initiative, is especially char- 
acteristic of the plan of my book. This arrangement 
and classification of well-known facts involves a point 



Vlli PREFACE 

of view which seems to me to possess a certain relative 
novelty. The entire subordination of the usual dis- 
tinctions of Feeling, Intellect, and Will, to these deeper 
distinctions, which my own division of the phenomena 
of mind is intended to emphasise, — -"the persistent 
stress that I lay upon the unity of the intellectual and 
the voluntary processes, which, in popular treatises, are 
too often sundered, and treated as if one of them could 
go on without the other, — these are also characteristic 
of the present discussion. Furthermore, in the chapter 
on the Feelings, I have presented views which are in 
some respects of my own devising. The traditional 
view makes Pleasure and Displeasure the sole elementary 
qualities of Feeling. Wundt has recently insisted upon 
the existence of three different "dimensions" of feel- 
ing ; i.e. he has maintained that there are three " pairs 
of opposing qualities," to be found amongst the 
elementary feelings, — pleasure and its opposite together 
constituting ojie only of these pairs. I have here at- 
tempted, provisionally, a i^W(9-dimensional scheme of 
the elementary feelings. The interest of my hypothesis, 
if it has any value, lies in the statement which it makes 
possible concerning the relation of Feeling and Conduct. 
I am able to define, in terms of my view, the possibility 
of certain forms of conduct, and of certain tendencies 
of the attention, which the customary pleasure-dis- 
pleasure theory, as I think, is unable to describe. 

In addition to these matters, relating to the theoretical 



PREFACE ix 

aspects of my book, there is one further topic which 
may interest some more technical readers. In the 
chapter on Mental Initiative, I have, namely, stated 
certain views regarding the origin of novel modes of 
conduct, and novel forms of consciousness, — views 
which, as I hope, are worthy of some consideration, and 
which are, in some respects, relatively independent. 
They are introduced into this book especially for the 
sake of their practical bearings. But they also have a 
theoretical aspect which may interest the more profes- 
sional reader of this volume. 

To my mind, namely, an interesting side-light has 
been shed upon the well-known controversies between 
the associationists on the one hand, and the school of 
Wundt, and the partisans of " mental activity " gener- 
ally, on the other, by the stress that Professor Loeb has 
recently laid upon the part that what he calls " tropisms " 
play in the life of animals of all grades. By a 
" tropism," Loeb means a response, on the part of an 
organism, to some type of physical or chemical stimulus, 
— a response taking the form of some characteristic 
movement, which may or may not be adaptive in any 
particular case, but which is determined by the nature 
of the stimulus and of the organism. Loeb's "trop- 
isms " are exemplified by the actions of such organisms 
as turn toward the light, or as flee the light, or as find 
their way into crevices, or as do any other characteristic 
thing, with a mechanical certainty, whenever they are 



X PREFACE 

stimulated in special fashions by light, by the touch of 
solid objects, or by other stimuli, e.g. by chemical 
stimuli. The moth's flight into the candle-flame is an 
instance of such a "tropism." As thus appears, the 
" tropism " need not, in any one case, prove to be an 
adaptive response to the environment, although the 
resultant of all of the "tropisms" together must in 
general, in any organism, tend to the survival of the 
type of organism in question. 

Now it is especially notable that the "tropisms" of 
Loeb are not, like the " reflex actions " of the usual theo- 
ries, modes of activity primarily determined by the 
functions of specific nerve-centres. Furthermore, they 
are more general and elemental in their character than 
are any of the acquired habits of an organism. At any 
one moment when they are called into activity, they may 
run counter to the acquired habits. In brief, Loeb's 
concept of a " tropism " is different from the ordi- 
nary concept of a reflex action, and is different, too, 
from the concept of an acquired adaptive habit of action. 
Loeb has insisted that the new concept is more funda- 
mental than the old ones, and that both habits and reflex 
actions must ultimately be explained as results of "trop- 
isms." Now it has occurred to me to maintain, in sub- 
stance, that the factor in mental life which Wundt's 
school define as " Apperception," and which others so 
often call "spontaneity," "active attention," "conscious 
activity," or, sometimes, " self-activity," may well be 



PREFACE xi 

treated, from the purely psychological point of view, as 
the conscious aspect or accompaniment of a collection of 
tendencies of the type which Loeb has called " tropisms." 
These tendencies appear at once as elemental, and at 
the moment at which they are aroused, as sovereign 
over acquired habits and associations of ideas ; in other 
words, as directive of the course of our conscious life. 

In thus reducing the physical accompaniment of the 
process which Wundt calls "Apperception," and which 
others call " self-activity " to the type of what Loeb 
calls "tropisms," I am able to explain, in so far as the 
point of view of the psychologist requires such explana- 
tion, the frequent appearance in our mental life of a 
factor which (i) is more general than is any specific 
mental function due to our acquired habits, and which 
(2) seems at any moment to be capable of directing the 
course of our associations, rather than to be merely the 
result of experience and association. Yet in order to 
explain the presence of such a factor, I am not obliged 
to go beyond the presuppositions which determine the 
point of view of the psychologist. Wundt has insisted 
that his " Apperception " is no disembodied spiritual en- 
tity. I conceive that Loeb has indicated to us, in the 
concept of the "tropism," how a power more or less 
directive of the course of our associations, and more 
general than is any one of the tendencies that are due, 
in us, to habit, or to specific experience, can find its em- 
bodiment in the most elemental activities of our organ- 



xil PREFACE 

ism. Wundt's opponents, on the contrary, insist that all 
our activities must be due to inherited reflexes, modified 
by experience, and organised by the law of habit ; and 
that consequently the law of association must determine 
the sequence of all our mental states. Loeb shows how 
the " tropisms " are more elemental than the reflexes, and 
how they are capable of suddenly modifying our habits. 
The result must be, as I maintain, that the associa- 
tionist view of mental life must have its limitations. 

Upon the basis of the ideas thus indicated, I have 
sketched, in Chapter XVIII of my text, a theory of how 
the apparent " originality," or " spontaneity," or in 
another phraseology, the Initiative, of the organism, and 
of the individual mind, are to be treated from the point 
of view of the psychologist. Meanwhile this theory 
has indeed deeper relations, in my own mind, to certain 
philosophical views of mine as to the real nature of 
individual choice and originality. These views I have 
elsewhere in part already set forth ; but they are not in 
place in a book dealing with Psychology. And they are 
indeed far enough from the views which Professor Loeb 
has in mind in his researches. 

I have thus indicated, not only to those readers to 
whom I especially appeal, but also to the more technical 
student, wherein lie some of the more characteristic of 
the features which this little book possesses. The less 
technical reader, however, for whom my text, especially 
in its more practical discussions, is chiefly intended, 



PREFACE xiii 

need not trouble himself as to what is mine or is not 
mine, nor as to the deeper problems of theory which I 
touch upon, nor as to how my views are related to those 
of other students. I have tried to help such a reader, 
who may often be, as I hope, like myself, a teacher, to 
understand some of the best known of the results of 
psychological study, and at the same time to view those 
results in a light that may sometimes justly appear to 
him to be novel. I have also tried to help him a little 
to apply his knowledge in practice. 

I have still to acknowledge my constant indebtedness 
in this book, first, to the one who was amongst my 
earliest guides in the study of Psychology, namely, to 
my honoured friend and colleague, Professor William 
James, and secondly to Professor Baldwin, to whose 
treatment of the problems of Mental Evolution my 
own discussion of Mental Initiative owes not a little, 
and whose discussions of the social factors in mental 
development have also much influenced my own. 

The fact that I have been forced to correct the proof- 
sheets of the present volume, during a temporary leave 
of absence from my usual place of work, and while at 
a distance both from my publisher and my library, may 
help to explain some of the errors which may have 
crept into the printed text, and which may have escaped 

my notice. 

JOSIAH ROYCE. 

March 30, 1903. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Introductory Definitions and Explanations .... 1-19 

§ I. Definition of psychology. Contrast between mental and 

physical phenomena ....... I 

§ 2. In what sense mental phenomena are internal . . 3 

§ 3. A science of mental phenomena is made possible by the 

fact that mental phenomena have physical expressions 5 
§ 4. Such a science is further made possible by the fact that 

mental phenomena occur under physical cojiditions . 9 
§5. These physical conditions include certain nervous processes 10 
§ 6. Nervous functions that are attended with mental life and 

those that are not so attended; their general relations 11 
§7. The three essential undertakings of psychological study . 12 
§8. Psychological methods: (i) The study of the expressive 
signs of mental life; (2) The study of the relations 
between brain and mind . . . . . -13 

§ 9. Psychological methods: (3) Introspection; (4) Psycho- 
logical experiment , . , . . . .16 



CHAPTER II 

The Physical Signs of the Presence of Mind . . 20-57 

§ ic. The signs of mental life. The discriminating sensitive- 
ness of beings that possess minds .... 20 

§ II. The forms of this sensitiveness: (i) The signs of feeling 22 

§ 12. The forms of discriminating sensitiveness continued: 

(2) The signs of sensory experience .... 24 

§ 13. Practical uses of the foregoing class of signs of mental 

life. Difficulty of estimating these signs correctly . 27 

XV 



xvi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§ 14. The signs of sensory discrimination may seem to be present 
where there still may not be the corresponding con- 
sciousness. The heliotropism of plants and Loeb's 
general conception of a " tropism." Practical conse- 
quences as to these signs of mind .... 28 

§15. The signs of mental life continued : The eigns of the influ- 
ence of former experience upon present conduct . . 32 

§ 16. Inherited instincts and acquired habits. The latter as 

furnishing the signs of the influence of experience . 34 

§ 17. Relation between the signs of the influence of experience 

and the signs of sensitiveness ..... 36 

§ 18. General definition of docility ...... 37 

§ 19. The signs of mental life continued : The signs of what 

seems to be spontaneity ...... 38 

§ 20. Difficulty of asserting the existence of spontaneity in the 
actions of any being. Docility may lead to what seems 
spontaneity 39 

§ 21. Examples of what seem to be more genuine instances of 

spontaneity ......... 42 

§ 22. Provisional definition of the concept of mental initiative . 46 

§ 23. The relation of the signs of initiative to the signs of 

docility 51 

§ 24. Initiative in relation to what is often called " self-activity," 
and to the questions as to the influence of heredity and 
environment ........ 53 

§ 25. Summary : The signs of sensitiveness, of docility, and of 
initiative as the three classes of the signs of mind. 
Division of the later discussion ..... 55 

CHAPTER III 
The Nervous Conditions of the Manifestation of Mind 58-80 



§ 26. The structure of the nervous system. The neurons 

§ 27. Sensory and motor nerves ..... 

§ 28. Characteristics of cerebral processes : Habit, localization 

of function, generalized and specialized habits. " Set 

of brain 
§ 29. Relation of the cortex to lower nervous centres. Guid 

ance, coordination, inhibition .... 



58 
61 



64 
70 



CONTENTS xvii 



§ 30. Inhibition considered more in detail. Its importance . 70 
§ 31. Examples of inhibition in relation to mental processes. 

The hierarchy of functions 73 

§ 32. Practical applications of the principle 6f the inhibitory 

character of the higher nervous processes • • • 75 

CHAPTER IV 
General Features of Conscious Life .... 81-118 

§ 33- What cerebral functions are attended by conscious life ? . 81 

§ 34. The " stream of consciousness " and its " contents " . . 82 

§ 35. The " unity of consciousness." What it means and its 

general relation to the variety of our conscious states . 85 

§ 36. The variety of our conscious states as an essential condi- 
tion of our consciousness and of its unity ... 89 

§ 37. Difference and sameness as inseparable relations amongst 
the various states present within the unity of conscious- 
ness. The relation of sameness and difference to unity 
and variety and to one another ..... 90 

§ 38. Practical applications of the principles regarding the 
relations of sameness and difference. How we teach 
people to note resemblances and differences . . 94 

§ 39. The unity of consciousness as not only simultaneous, but 
successive. The "present moment" as possessing a 
finite length 95 

§ 40. The question whether our mental life is a complex con- 
sisting of certain ultimate elements. The concept of 
elementary sensations and feelings .... 97 

§ 41. The concept of mental elements more generally stated. 
Mental elements in relation to cerebral functions. The 
" blending " of mental elements ..... 100 

§ 42. Psychological experiment as a means of isolating and 

defining the mental elements 103 

§ 43. Examples of the analysis of conscious states. The analysis 

of musical sounds and of other complexes . . . 104 

§ 44. Criticism of the foregoing theory of the constitution of 
our conscious life. The " mental elements" exist when 
they are consciously observed, not otherwise. Analysis 
alters the consciousness that is analysed . . . 107 



XVm CONTENTS 



§ 45. And nevertheless the theory of the mental elements ex- 
presses important truths. What the experimental 
analyses do show concerning our consciousness . .112 

§ 46. The law that for any ordinary state of consciousness an 
analysed state or series of states can be substittded. 
Significance of this law II5 

§ 47, Classification of the subsequent discussion . . .117 



CHAPTER V 

Sensitiveness. A. Sensory Experience .... 1 19-147 

§48. The concept of a sensation 119 

§ 49. The relation of consciousness to sensations . . . 120 
§ 50. Sensations as relatively simple mental states experimen- 
tally producible . . . . . . . .122 

§ 51. Every grade and form of normal consciousness is affected 
by the accompanying sensory experience. Practical 
consequences of this principle. Examples . . . 123 
§ 52. External and internal sensory experience and their general 

relationships . . . . . . . .129 

§ 53- Organic and dermal sensory experience .... 131 

§ 54. Sensory experiences of taste, smell, sight, and hearing . 134 
§55. The attributes of sensation. Quality and intensity . . 136 
§ 56. Extensity as an attribute of sensory experience. The 
bases of our knowledge of space. The relation of 
space to the reactions of orientation .... 139 



CHAPTER VI 

Sensitiveness. B. Mental Imagery 148-162 

§57. Definition and characteristics of mental images . . 148 
§ 58. The classes of mental images. Galton's inquiries. The 

types of imagery characteristic of different minds . 151 

§ 59. Relations of mental images to consciousness in general, 
to current sensory experience, and to motor processes 
and tendencies. Practical considerations concerning 
mental imagery ........ 157 



CONTENTS XIX 



CHAPTER VII 

PAGE 

Sensitiveness. C. The Feelings 163-196 

§ 60. The feelings in general. Their traditional relation to the 

intellect and the will. Their place in the present study 163 

§ 61. Elementary feelings not as extensively to be studied by 
experiment as are elementary sensations. The " sub- 
jective " character of feelings ..... 165 

§ 62. The classification of the feelings into those of pleasure 
and those of displeasure. Apparent difficulty about 
this classification. Usual answer to this difficulty . 167 

§ 63. The antagonism of pleasure and displeasure. Their rela- 
tion to conduct ........ 171 

§ 64. Further difficulties in the way of viewing the foregoing 
classification as exhaustive. The "mixed" feelings 
and their complexity . . . . . , -173 

§ 65. Wundt's "three-dimensional" classification of the feelings 176 

§ 66. Hypothesis of a ^wo-dimensional classification of the feel- 
ings. Two pairs of opposed tendencies in feeling: 
(i) Pleasure and displeasure; (2) Restlessness and 
quiescence ......... 177 

§ 67. Characterisation of pleasure and displeasure. Charac- 
terisation of restlessness and quiescence . . -179 

§ 68. The quiescent and the restless states of displeasure and 

the restless and quiescent pleasures . . . .182 

§ 69. Relation of the two pairs of antagonistic feelings to con- 
sciousness in general . . . . . . .184 

§ 70. The four types of mixed feelings more exactly defined 

and illustrated 185 

§ 71. The relatively simple states of feeling. Relation of rest- 
lessness and quiescence, and of pleasure and displeas- 
ure, to the attention 189 

§ 72. Review of the whole survey of conscious processes up to 
the present point. Question as to the completeness of 
the classification, thus far given, of our present con- 
scious states. Is the, will such as to include still other 
sorts of mental states ? . . . . . .192 



XX CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§ 73. The place of the will in consciousness. The relation of 
will to sensory experience, to imagery, and to feeling. 
Result as to the completeness of the classification up 
to the present point ....... 193 

CHAPTER VIII 
The General Law of Docility 197-217 

§ 74. The evidences of docility are furnished by facts that have 

to do both with knowledge and with conduct . . 197 

§ 75. The cerebral law of habit and its relation to our conscious 

processes ......... 198 

§ 76. The process of formation of a new habit; simplification; 
welding of partial processes into unity. Training welds 
simultaneous as well as successive functions . . 200 

§ 77. The law of association as the expression of the law of 
habit in mental terms. Inadequacy of this expression. 
Simultaneous and successive association . . . 203 

§ 78. Consequences of the inadequacy of the mental process to 
represent the complexity of the cerebral process. As- 
sociation by similarity. Its reduction to the law of 
habit 205 

§ 79. The theory that association binds mental elements to- 
gether. Criticism of this theory ..... 208 

§ 80. The traditional forms of association ..... 209 

§ 81. Inadequacy of the general law of association to determine 
what one of various possible associations shall prove 
effective in any one case ...... 210 

§ 82. Vividness and recency as factors which determine the 

course of association . . . . . . .212 

§ 83. Factors which determine the course of association (con- 
cluded) : The present " set " of the brain . . . 214 

CHAPTER IX 
Docility. A. Perception and Action .... 218-228 

§ 84. General plan of the following discussion . . . .218 
§ 85. General relation of perceptions to actions. Illustration 

from the life of infancy ...... 218 



CONTENTS 



XXI 



§86. 
§87. 



§90. 

§91- 
§92. 

%93- 



§94- 
§95- 

§96. 



PAGE 

Perception and action in adult life . . . . .221 

The feelings which accompany perception. The feeling 

of familiarity ........ 224 

Practical consequences of the relations between percep- 
tion and action = 225 

CHAPTER X 

B. Assimilation 229-247 

Assimilation, differentiation, and the social aspect of 
docility as the remaining aspects of docility to be 
treated in this discussion ...... 229 

The assimilation of new habits to old ones as a conse- 
quence of the law of habit 231 

The mental aspect of the process of assimilation . . 234 

Illustrations of mental assimilation. The Herbartian 

"Apperception". ....... 235 

Illustrations of mental assimilation (continued) : Our 
memory of the past as an assimilative process. Errors 
of memory which result ...... 236 

Further illustrations of defective memory . . . 239 

The assimilative process is never the only aspect of our 

conscious relation to our experience .... 242 

Assimilation in its relations to the thinking process. 

" Explanation " and reasoning as assimilative processes 245 



CHAPTER XI 



§99. 
§ 100. 

§ lOI. 



C. Differentiation 248-273 

The general nature of the differentiation which accom- 
panies the development of the mind .... 248 

The derivation of our consciousness of simultaneous 

variety from our consciousness of successive variety . 250 

Illustration from our consciousness of space . . . 252 

Education as an instance of differentiation. Practical 

importance of the dramatic element in instruction . 254 

Judgment, and the thinking process in general, as a 

process of differentiation. Analysis and synthesis . 255 



xxil CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§ 1 02. Practical consequences . . . . . . -257 

§ 103. The process of attention as an aspect of the process of 

differentiation . . . . . . . .258 

§ 104. The limits of differentiation and the "psycho-physic law" 264 
§ 105. The psycho-physic law as a law not of sensation, but of 

the limitations of our docility ..... 268 

CHAPTER XII 

Docility. D. The Social Aspect of the Higher Forms of 

Docility 274-298 

§ 106. Human mental life as primarily social .... 274 

§ 107. The bases of social consciousness : Imitation . . . 275 

§ 108. The bases of social consciousness: The love of opposition 277 
§ 109. The general relations of the thinking process to social 

stimulations and habits. Why language becomes so 

significant for the development of the thinking process 280 

§ 1 10. The formation of general ideas ..... 285 

§1X1. General ideas as " plans of action " .... 288 
§ II 2. Social activities as the means of bringing these plans of 

action to clear consciousness ..... 290 
§ 113. Judgment as dependent for its development upon social 

conditions ......... 292 

§ 114. The social aspect of the development of the reasoning 

process ......... 293 

§115. The social aspect of the development of self-consciousness 296 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Conditions of Mental Initiative .... 299-332 

§ 116. The problem as to the possibility of mental initiative 

stated . 299 

§ II 7. The early imperfection and the slow development of the 

manifestations of our inherited tendencies to action . 302 
§ 118. Consequences of these facts for the early training of the 

individual ......... 304 

§ 119. The persistence of the young organism in acts that are 

not yet adaptive 306 



CONTENTS XXlil 

PAGE 

§ 1 20. Illustrations of the restless persistence in acts that are so 

far not adaptive in the case of adult animal organisms 312 

§ 121. Illustrations of a similar restless persistence in adult 

human beings . . . . . . . • S'S 

§ 122. Such restless persistence in advance of adaptation as 
the one source of significant initiative in conduct and 
in mind ......... 318 

§123. Illustrations from the plays of children .... 319 

§ 124. Illustrations of a similar initiative in the activities of 

youth ......... 324 

§ 125. Illustrations of restless persistence in case of the social 

tendencies toward individualism .... 326 

§ 126. Ordinary active attention as a process of restless per- 
sistence in advance of adaptation. Attention and the 
" tropisms " of Loeb ....... 328 

§ 127. The bases of all initiative are to be found in " tropisms" 
that lead to a restless persistence in types of action 
which are not yet adaptive. Practical consequences 330 



CHAPTER XIV 
Certain Varieties of Emotional and Intellectual Life 333-363 

§ 128. Recapitulation and survey of further practical appli- 
cations ......... 333 

§ 129. The nature of the emotions ...... 335 

§ 130. The relation of the emotions to their physical expression 337 

§ 131. The practical aspect of the life of the emotions. Emo- 
tional variability. The emotional " undertone " . 340 

§ 132. Abnormal emotions. The sexual emotions and their 
abnormities. Practical considerations as to the ab- 
normities of emotional life in general . . . 343 

§ ^33- The intellectual life in general. Principles that preside 

over its practical guidance ...... 349 

§ 134. The abnormities of the intellectual life. Secondary 

impairment of the intellectual life .... 352 

§135. Primary intellectual disorders illustrated. Hallucinations 

and delusions . . . . . . . . 355 

§ 136. Eccentricity of intellectual life. Practical rule for judg- 
ing " original " characters and persons . . . 360 



xxiv CONTENTS 



CHAPTER XV 

PAGE 

The Will or the Direction of Conduct .... 364-379 

§ 137. The will, in the wider sense of the term, as our whole 

consciousness of our activity ..... 364 

§ 138. The relation of attention to volition. Choice, and the 

will in the narrower sense ...... 367 

§ 139. Conscious choice and its unoriginal character. The will 
in the narrower sense takes its rise in " involuntary " 
action ......... 369 

§ 140. Illustration of volition by the case of the growth of the 

speech-function . . . . . . . .371 

§141. The practical aspect of the training of the will . . 373 

§ 142. Abnormities of volition ....... 375 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

As Psychology has taken on something of the aspect 
of a natural science, it has presented new difficulties to 
the student. The natural sciences are based on an 
elaborate series of presuppositions, none of which are 
tested or examined by those sciences. The older form 
of psychology began by setting forth its presupposi- 
tions, many of them crude and untenable, perhaps, but 
nevertheless it made the fact clear that the superstruc- 
ture had a foundation of some sort. Psychology as now 
expounded is as chary of stating its presuppositions 
as is physics, with consequent loss of clearness and 
cogency to the philosophically minded student. As a 
result, there is constant need for a summing-up and 
interpretation of the results of special inquiries and 
investigations. Without this summing-up and inter- 
pretation, the student of psychology in its newer forms 
is lost in a maze of details, whose interrelations he com- 
prehends very imperfectly, if at all. 

It may be assumed, I think, that the fundamental 
fact to be grasped in psychology is what has been 
called the "isolation of the individual mind." Professor 
Royce refers to this in his opening paragraphs. When 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

this viewpoint is clearly held, then the function and 
value of the several methods used in psychology, as 
well as the significance of the departments into which 
its facts are classified, become plain. Genetic, compara- 
tive, and social psychology are then terms with a real 
meaning, and such qualifying words as "rational," "ex- 
perimental," and "physiological" are seen to have ref- 
erence primarily to methods of study, rather than to 
varying data. 

The student of psychology must put to himself these 
questions and others like them, and must search in his 
study for the grounds on which correct answers to 
them rest: — 

How and by what warrant do I pass from a knowl- 
edge of my own mental states to a knowledge and inter- 
pretation of the mental states of others .'' What are the 
primary evidences of mind .'' Into what and how few 
simplest units can my own complex mental states be 
broken up .'' What are the processes of mental growth 
and development, and what laws govern them ? 

If he gains clear and reasonable convictions on such 
points as these, he has not studied psychology in vain. 

There has been much useless and misleading discus- 
sion as to the special value of psychology to the 
teacher. I fail to see how the proposition that a 
knowledge of psychology is of use to the teacher is 
open to discussion at all, unless through a juggling with 
the plain meaning of words. That the average teacher 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

need not spend much time in mastering the more tech- 
nical details of modern psychology, is obvious; but it 
is equally obvious that the average teacher should be 
familiar with what may, perhaps, be called general psy- 
chology, particularly in its genetic aspects. No process 
is known to man by which knowledge will surely be 
converted into sympathy and insight ; but sympathy 
and insight, however great, are invariably made greater 
when knowledge is added to them. 

In this belief. Professor Royce's exposition of the 
main facts and principles of psychology is gladly 
included in a series of volumes intended particularly 
to meet the needs of studious teachers. 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER. 

Columbia University, New York, 
April 15, 1903. 



OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

CHAPTER I 

Introductory Definitions and Explanations 

§ I. Psychology, in a general way, has the same sort 
of relation to the functions of the human mind that 
physiology has to the functions of the human body. 
Psychology is, namely, the doctrine which attempts to 
describe our mental life, and, as far as possible, to dis- 
cover its conditions and its laws. And by our mental 
life, as opposed to our physical life, we mean a certain 
collection of states and of processes with which, from 
moment to moment, each one of us is, in his own case, 
very directly or immediately acquainted, while, on the 
other hand, it is impossible that any one else besides 
the original observer, whose mental Hfe this is, should 
ever get this immediate sort of acquaintance with just 
this collection of states and processes. Herein, then, lies 
the essential characteristic of our mental life. Others 
may learn, from observing our acts and our words, a 
great deal about this, our own mental life ; but each one 
of us is the only being capable of becoming directly 
aware of his own micntal states. On the other hand, 



2 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

however, our physical Hfe, in its external manifesta- 
tions, may be observed by any one who gets the op- 
portunity. And thus the fact that the mental life of 
each one of us can be directly present, as a series of 
experienced facts, to one person only, may well be used 
as a means of defining the difference between our physi- 
cal and our mental life. Thus physical facts are usually 
conceived as " public property," patent to all properly 
equipped observers. All such observers, according to 
our customary view, see the same physical facts. But 
psychical facts are essentially " private property," ex- 
istent for one alone. This constitutes the very concep- 
tion of the difference between "inner" psychical or 
mental, and physical or "outer" facts — a conception 
behind which, in the following discussion, we shall not 
seek to go.^ 

^ This method of defining the general nature of the mental world, and 
of distinguishing the mental from the physical world, is founded upon 
philosophical considerations which I have more fully explained elsewhere. 
Cf. my Spirit of Modej'n Philosophy (Boston, Riverside Press, 1892), 
Chapter XII; the essay on "Self-consciousness, Social Consciousness, 
and Nature," in my Studies of Good and Evil (New York, Appleton & Co., 
1898); and the second and fourth lectures in my Gifford Lectw'es ; The 
World and the Individual, Second Series (New York, The Macmillan 
Company, 1901). The present is no place for developing these meta- 
physical considerations. It may, however, interest the philosophically 
disposed reader to know that my own philosophical position is that of 
Constructive or Absolute Idealism, and that, accordingly, the distinction 
here made between the mental and the physical worlds is, to my mind, 
only a relative distinction due to the special conditions to which our 
human knowledge of both these worlds is subject. None the less, for 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 3 

§ 2. It is this fundamental difference that leads us 
often to speak of the mental as the "internal life" or 
the " inner world," and to oppose it both to our own 
physical life and to the "external physical world." 
This way of expressing the distinction between mental 
facts and all others is fairly good, but must be carefully 
guarded against misinterpretation. The physiological 
processes of our bodies are physical, but are indeed also 
often viewed as "internal," since they go on within our 
bodies, and are in general mainly hidden from direct 
external observation. But our mental life is "internal" 
in quite a different sense. Digestion, circulation, and 
the changes of our tissues are processes which are 
actually altogether hidden from many forms of outer 
observation, and which, at best, can only be observed 
very partially, and for the most part very indirectly, by 
observers who view us from without. But, on the other 
hand, these processes, in the case of each one of us, are 
also very ill known to us ourselves, and are in large 
part not even indirectly represented by any of our own 
conscious mental states. So that, when we speak of our 
physiological processes as internal, the word " internal," 

human experience, in so far as it is concerned with the special sciences, 
the distinction here made is of paramount practical importance. 

My colleague, Professor Miinsterberg, whose philosophical position is 
not the same as my own, has nevertheless quite independently reached 
the same definition of the fundamental contrast between the mental and 
the material phenomena. See his Psychology and Life and his Grundziige 
der Psychologie. 



4 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

although it here generally implies " hidden, in whole 
or in part, from actual outer observation," does not 
imply '' directly felt by us ourselves." But when we 
speak of a pain as an "inner" mental fact, we mean 
that while nobody but the sufferer can possibly get any 
direct acquaintance with its presence, the sufferer him- 
self can do so, and is aware of the pain. Furthermore, 
the fact that other observers cannot directly watch our 
inner physiological processes, is itself something rela- 
tively accidental, dependent upon the limitations of the 
sense organs, or upon the defective instrumental devices, 
of those who watch us. But the fact that our mental 
states are incapable of observation by anybody but our- 
selves seems to be not an accidental, but an essential 
character of these mental states. Were physiologists 
better endowed with sense organs and with instruments 
of exact observation, we can, if we choose, conceive 
them as, by some now unknown device, coming to 
watch the very molecules of our brains ; but we cannot 
conceive them, in any possible case, as observing from 
without our pains or our thoughts in the sense in which 
physical facts are observable. Were my body as trans- 
parent as crystal, or could all my internal physical 
functions be viewed and studied as easily as one now 
observes a few small particles eddying in a glass of 
nearly clear water, my mental states could not even 
then be seen floating in my brain. No microscope 
could conceivably reveal them. To me alone would 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 5 

these states be known. And I should not see them 
from without; I should simply Jind them, or de azvare 
of them. And what it is to find them, or to be aware 
of them, I alone can tell myself. 

§ 3. Mental life has thus been defined by pointing 
out its contrast with all that is physical. Now, psy- 
chology is to undertake the study of mental life for the 
sake of trying to describe and, in a measure, to explain 
its facts. But this undertaking may, for the first, 
appear to be quite hopeless. How can one describe, 
with any sort of accuracy, where the facts to be de- 
scribed are in any case open to the inspection of one 
observer only .-' Successful description, made with any 
scientific purpose, seems to involve the possibility of 
comparing together the various attempts at description 
made by different observers in view of the same facts. 
When astronomers observe celestial objects, they com- 
pare the results of the various observations of different 
astronomers. Upon the multitude of trained observers, 
occupying, upon occasion, widely different positions on 
the earth's surface, but all looking at the same heavenly 
bodies, the possibility of the growth of astronomical 
science seems to depend. How, then, shall psychology 
progress if, in our various mental lives, no two ob- 
servers can ever take note of precisely the same facts ? 
Is it not as if there were as many real moons as there 
are astronomers observing the heavens, and a different 
real moon for each astronomer, which nobody but him- 



6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

self could ever see ? In such a case, one may ask, 
What would become of astronomy ? 

Without in the least going into the extended and 
interesting philosophical problems suggested by these 
questions, it is enough here to point out at once that, 
while no two persons among us can ever observe the 
same series of mental facts and processes, psychological 
study is nevertheless made possible by the fact (a fact 
of the most fundamental importance) that we all of us 
not only have our mental states, but also appear to give 
these mental states a physical expi'ession in certain bodily 
acts, viz., in what may be called our expressive func- 
tions. The mental states themselves each one of us 
obse^^s for himself alone. Their physical expression 
is something that, like any other physical fact, is patent 
to all observers. 

Now, any one of us can often observe for himself 
what sort of physical expression some given sort of 
mental states gets in his own case. Thus one can 
sometimes observe how, by cries or by groans, he him- 
self gives expression to his own pain ; or how, by 
appropriate bodily attitudes, he expresses the mental 
states of attentive interest which we call " looking," 
"listening," "watching," and the like; or, finally, how 
he adapts the familiar words of his mother-tongue to 
the expression of multitudinous inner moods, and other 
personal experiences, for many of which, in fact, we 
have no definite and conscious bodily expression at our 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 7 

voluntary disposal except such words as chance to occur 
to us as appropriate at the moment when these states 
are passing. Cries, groans, sighs, tears, gestures, atti- 
tudes, words, and other far less easily observable ex- 
pressions — some voluntary, some involuntary — are 
thus found to accompany our mental processes. But all 
these expressive movements are themselves facts in the 
physical world, and are, as such, matters both for 
common observation and for exact scientific scrutiny. 
Most of these expressive acts show marked similarity, 
either in several, in many, or in all men. And mean- 
while, what states in each one of us they express, the 
individual observer experiences for himself. In at- 
tempting to describe our mental experiences to one 
another we therefore constantly make use of the names 
of familiar expressive functions, such as laughter, weep- 
ing, and the like. 

Some of our expressive acts, like the ones just named, 
viewed apart from their names, are of instinctive origin 
and are only partially under the influence of conven- 
tions. Other expressive acts, like the use of the words 
of our mother-tongue to embody or to describe our 
mental states, are of purely conventional origin, and 
have only become moulded by slow degrees to a certain 
sort of uniformity as regards their relation to similar 
mental states in many people. Whether one person 
means by the word " love " a state very closely similar 
to the state that another person means by the same 



8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

word may be, and often is, a very difficult question to 
decide. Yet the use of the words of our common 
mother-tongue to express our mental states, guided as 
this use has been since childhood by the effort to con- 
form our expressions to the comprehension of our 
fellows, is often brought to a point which enables us to 
be decidedly sure that the states which many people 
agree in describing in given words are themselves in 
pretty close agreement. With some caution, the same 
may be regarded as true, within limits, as to the states 
described in various languages by parallel words and 
phrases. 

While we are then unable to make our mental 
states objects of common observation, in the sense in 
which the astronomers are said to observe the same 
star, we nevertheless can observe in common our nat- 
ural and conventional, our simple and complex, our 
voluntary and involuntary, our more subtle and our 
less subtle motor expressions of our mental states, 
whether in our outward deeds or in the permanent 
products of these deeds (as in works of skilful art), 
or in our words, or in our momentary gestures, or, 
finally, in our established habits of behaviour. The 
inner meaning of such expressions each of us can, by 
more or less attentive scrutiny, discover for himself. 
Their agreement in many persons enables mental 
facts, private though they be, to be indirectly sub- 
mitted to a comparative study in many people, and 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 9 

to some sort of generalisation, classification, and even 
explanation. 

§ 4. While this outward physical expression, which 
our mental life gets, makes psychology, as a compara- 
tive and more or less scientific study of mind, pos- 
sible, our study itself is very greatly aided by a 
further consideration, viz., that we not only express 
our minds through our movements, but seem to our- 
selves to be dependent, for at least very much of our 
mental life, upon more or less definable physical condi- 
tions, which we recognise, even apart from any special 
study, as matters well known in daily life, and as 
matters which we can study in common. Thus the pri- 
vate mental condition is noticed by its one observer to 
vary with the presence or absence of physical facts 
that he and his fellows can observe together. That 
one cannot see in the dark, that one feels cold at a 
time when the thermometer reveals the physical fact 
of a low temperature, that violent physical exercise 
makes one weary — these are facts which have, at the 
very same time, their psychical aspect manifest to one 
observer, and their physical aspect manifest to all ob- 
servers. A more scientific study, moreover, shows us 
that not merely some, but all of our mental states 
vary with physical conditions of one sort or another. 
Now, this sort of union of the public and the private, 
of the generally accessible and of the purely individ- 
ual, gives us many means for indirectly comparing 



10 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

and classifying mental facts and for studying their 
conditions in various people. 

§ 5. But both the expressive movements and the 
physical conditions thus far mentioned prove, upon 
closer examination, to have a character as physical 
processes that makes them still further the topics of 
a scientific scrutiny ; for we possess, as a most impor- 
tant part of our physical structure, 02ir nervous systems. 
And it may be shown that the expressive physical 
functions (acts, gestures, words, habits, etc.) in which 
our mental life gets its outward representation and 
embodiment, are all of them, as physical events, deter- 
mined by physiological processes that occur in our ner- 
vous system,s. In other words, the functions of the 
nervous system, while they include many other pro- 
cesses as well, still also include, as a portion of them- 
selves, precisely those functions by which, from 
moment to moment, our mental states get expressed. 
Thus the scientific study of our expressive functions 
becomes linked to the general study of nervous physi- 
ology. On the other hand, however, those numerous 
physical conditions, both without and within our 
bodies, which have been mentioned as appearing to 
determine in some way our mental states, prove to be 
conditions that are effective in so far as they at the 
same time physically influence our nervous systems. 
Thus in two ways the scientific study of mental life 
may get aid from the study of the nervous system. 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS II 

§ 6. Now the physical functions of the nervous 
system are capable of a very extended comparative 
and experimental investigation. Those of the nervous 
functions which are not closely related (as apparent 
conditions or as expressions) to our mental processes, 
appear, in the light of such study, to differ from 
those nervous functions which are so related, chiefly 
in respect of the relative simplicity of the nervous 
functions which are not thus closely related to the 
mind, when compared with the relative complexity of 
those nervous functions which are more intimately 
related to mental processes. But no one easily de- 
finable dividing line appears between the two, except 
the familiar fact that the nervous functions most 
closely related to our mental life are locahsed, so far 
as concerns their central stations, in the cortex or' 
grey matter at the external surface of the brain, while 
the nervous functions that have no discoverable men- 
tal accompaniment are, for the most part, directed 
from centres placed below the level of this brain cor- 
tex. Otherwise, as we shall see from time to time 
hereafter, it is hard to prove any essential difference 
in kind between the physical functions whose ner- 
vous conditions are centred in the cortex and those 
which are centred lower down. The higher functions 
are, indeed, often vastly the more complex. They 
change much more during life, and under the in- 
fluence of our experience, than do our lower nervous 



12 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

functions. They show more signs of what is often 
called "spontaneity" — that is, of a certain relative 
(although never complete) independence of the pres- 
ent external physical surroundings in v/hich our body 
chances to be placed. But these, although large differ- 
ences, are differences of degree. Physically speaking, 
and despite vast differences in detail, the same general 
or fundamental types, both of structure and of function, 
are observable, both high up and low down in the 
nervous centres. 

§ 7. Yet one must insist that the study of neuro- 
logical facts has, although very great, still only relative 
value for the psychologist. For one thing, what the 
psychologist wants to understand is mental life, and to 
this end he uses all his other facts only as means ; and 
for the rest, miy physical expression of mental life which 
we can learn to interpret, becomes as genuinely interest- 
ing to the psychologist as does a brain function. A 
pyramid or a flint hatchet, a poem or a dance, a game 
or a war, a cry or a book, the nursery play of a child or 
the behaviour of an insane person, may be a physical 
expression of mental life such as the appreciative 
psychologist can both observe and more or less fully 
comprehend. The study of such facts, and of their 
physical causes and results, throws light both upon 
what goes on in minds and upon the place which minds 
occupy in the natural world. To be a student of psy- 
chology thus involves three essential things: (i) to 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 1 3 

observe carefully the signs which express mental life, 
and to interpret these expressions as far as possible ; 
(2) to examine those physical processes which in any 
case appear to condition mental life or to cause its 
expressions to occur; and (3), with constant reference 
to the foregoing classes of facts, to describe by means 
of a self-examination, or "introspection," the one series 
of mental facts which can alone be directly observed by 
the individual psychologist. Studies of the sorts (i) and 
(2) can be made by all properly equipped observers 
together, and in presence of what are called the " same " 
external facts. Studies of the sort (3) each psychologist 
must make alone for himself ; but by the aid of the 
facts acquired through studies of the sorts (2) and (3) 
he can indirectly compare his introspective results with 
those of other psychologists. The first two sorts of 
study are very greatly furthered by what we know of 
the nervous system, but are by no means confined to 
this region of knowledge. Psychology is by no means 
a branch of neurology. On the contrary, wherever, in 
the physical world, any mind gets intelligible expression, 
or any physical conditions appear to determine mental 
states, the psychologist finds what he wants, in so far as 
he seeks means of comparing his introspective observa- 
tions with the experiences of other minds. 

§ 8. The foregoing conditions already serve to define 
the principal methods of psychology, whereof we may 
next name the most important. 



14 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

(i) Our first method — the study of the expressive 
signs of mental life — is in some forms extremely 
familiar to the popular mind. Every person of any 
experience is his own psychologist in judging almost 
constantly the ideas, moods, and intents of his fellows, 
by watching not only their faces, but also their whole 
range of voluntary and involuntary expressive move- 
ments. The relatively scientific use of such study as a 
method of more careful psychological investigation 
depends both upon extending the range of its application, 
and upon rendering more minute the scrutiny employed. 
The naturalist employs this method when he studies the 
minds of animals through an observation of their be- 
haviour and of their skill. It should be carefully 
remembered, however, that not merely the passing 
functions of the moment, but the established habits and 
the permanent physical productions of any animal, are 
of importance as outwardly expressing its mind ; and a 
similar thing holds of physical facts and processes that 
express the cooperative work of many intelligent beings. 
Works of art, institutions, languages, customs, faiths, 
cities, national life in general — all these things and 
processes are instances of complex expressions of 
mental life in outwardly observable physical forms. 

The inevitable dangers and difficulties of this, the 
most constantly employed of all the methods of study- 
ing minds, are meanwhile, in part, well known. The 
facts to be studied are very numerous and complex, and 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 1 5 

easily misjudged, especially in case of minds that are 
markedly different from our own. A good example of 
this difficulty is the common failure of even very intelli- 
gent men to understand a good many among the expres- 
sive functions of women, or the similar failure of 
women to comprehend a great many among those of 
men. The barrier of sex will probably prove a per- 
manent hindrance, in some important directions and 
regions, to the progress of the scientific study of the 
human mind, so far as that study seeks to make the 
mental life of one sex fully comprehensible to psycholo- 
gists who belong to the other. 

(2) The second method of the psychologist begins by 
proceeding backwards from the study of the outwardly 
expressive functions, in which our mental states get a 
sort of embodiment, to the scrutiny of their nervous 
conditions. These, once found to be, as they are, 
centred in the organisation and in the functions of the 
brain, this second method develops into that of the study 
of the relations that exist between mental life and brain 
processes. This method is necessarily an indirect one. 
It takes very numerous special forms. One of these 
is furnished by the study of nervous diseases, with 
reference to those changes, in the expressive signs of 
mental life, which are the result of whatever form of 
nervous disorder is each time in question. In so far as 
the phenomena of insanity are already, despite our 
defective knowledge, traceable to otherwise known and 



1 6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

definable physical disorders of the nervous system, the 
study of such phenomena for the purpose of the psy- 
chologist also obviously belongs here. A further 
extension of the present method is offered by those 
experiments upon the nervous systems of animals 
which involve any noteworthy and intelligible changes 
in the signs of mind which these animals show. And 
it is thus that the functions of the brain have been fre- 
quently and very fruitfully studied during the last 
twenty-five years, despite the difficulty of drawing exact 
conclusions as regards the human brain and the human 
mind from the interpretation of such experiments. Nor 
does the use of the present method cease here ; for, 
apart from disease and from vivisection, we are able to 
perform an experiment upon the functions of the brain 
whenever (as by stimulating our sense organs in par- 
ticular ways) we can harmlessly bring about any 
physical change in a living man, whose mental life can 
indirectly be studied through his own accounts of it, 
while the physical effect that the experiment has upon 
his brain functions is meanwhile capable of a more or 
less determinate estimate. It is in this way that we 
study what is sometimes called '' the physiology of the 
senses." 

§ 9. (3) In close connection with the first, and in fre- 
quent connection with the second of the foregoing 
methods, stands the method of introspection, by which 
the individual psychologist undertakes to observe his own 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 1 7 

mental states and processes. If carried on alone, with- 
out constant reference to the physical conditions of the 
mental life observed, and without a frequent comparing 
of notes with one's fellows, introspection can accomplish 
little of service for psychology. But, in union with 
other methods, introspection becomes an absolutely in- 
dispensable adjunct to all serious psychological study. 
The man who has never observed within will never 
be able to interpret the minds of others. The student 
of neurology can directly contribute to psychological 
science only in case he learns to scrutinise carefully his 
individual mental processes, even while he indirectly 
learns about their nervous conditions. Introspection is, 
however, for the scientific psychologist, despite its im- 
portance, rather to be used as an auxiliary of the other 
methods than as a method capable of leading the way. 
For psychology is concerned with what is common to 
many or to all human minds. We are guided in our 
search for these common characters of minds by studying 
the expressions and the conditions of mental life. Intro- 
spection helps us mainly to an inte^'pretation of the com- 
mon features. However expert a man may be in his 
own mental states, it therefore takes a wide intercourse 
with his fellows, an outwardly observant examination of 
the signs of mind in others, and a careful study of the 
physical conditions in which given m.ental states arise, to 
reach any conclusions worthy of scientific consideration. 
The truly great " introspective psychologists " of the 



1 8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

past, from Aristotle down, were none of them, as psy- 
chologists, at all exclusively devoted to the study of their 
own personal experiences. They were, for instance, 
greatly influenced both by the traditional views of their 
social order, and by the popular psychology which lay 
more or less concealed in the languages that they used, 
(4) A centrally important modern method, which 
unites or may unite features belonging to all the fore- 
going methods, is the method of psychological experiment 
in the stricter sense. This method involves bringing 
to pass mental processes of greater or less coinplexity (acts 
of attention, simple acts of will or more complex acts of 
choice, associations of ideas, processes of memory or 
of computation, emotional states, etc.) under physical 
and mental conditions which can be exactly controlled or 
determined. Then, according as he wishes, the psy- 
chologist studies one or more of the various noteworthy 
aspects of the situation that has been experimentally 
brought to pass. Thus one can examine by direct intro- 
spection what goes on in a single observer under the 
circumstance of a given experiment. Here one takes 
advantage of the definiteness which the experimental 
devices may give to the whole experience. Or again, 
in a series of related experiments, one can introspec- 
tively note how the mental states or processes alter 
as the physical conditions undergo certain determinate 
variations. Further, through comparing the reports, or 
the other expressive signs which various subjects give 



DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS 1 9 

of what goes on in their minds under similar experimen- 
tal conditions, one can get results as to the relations 
that exist between the mental life of various people. In 
some cases it is also possible to determine, to a certain 
extent, what physical changes in the central nervous 
system are produced by the experiment, and thus our 
knowledge of the relations of particular nervous and 
particular mental states may be furthered. 

Very important results have also flowed from the 
careful noting of the various time relations of any or of 
all the foregoing classes of facts as they occur when 
exact experimental conditions have been established. 
The problem, how long a given mental process takes, 
and how this time element varies with given variations 
in the situation, is one of great interest to the psy- 
chologist. 

Experimental psychology is the most recent of the 
branches of psychological work. For the most part it 
has to be carried on in special laboratories, where there 
are instrumental means for measuring time relations, as 
well as for determining precisely the physical conditions 
under which the mental processes to be studied take 
place. 



CHAPTER II 

The Physical Signs of the Presence of Mind 

§ lo. In view of what has now been said about 
methods, we may best begin our analysis of the general 
characteristics of mental life by asking what are the 
most general classes of expressive signs by which the 
living beings that have minds manifest to us their men- 
tal life. How, then, do those animals which are high 
enough in the scale to seem to show us that they cer- 
tainly possess mental life differ from those living beings 
which, like the plants, give us no such manifestations? 

The most general answer to this question is, on the 
whole, not very difficult. When a cat watches for a 
mouse, when a dog finds his way home over strange 
country, we do not doubt that here are real signs of the 
presence of mind. When a tree that is cut with the axe 
shows no sign of feeling the blow, we note that here 
signs of mind are absent. To be quite certain just 
where to draw the line between living beings that seem 
to have no minds and living beings that possess minds, 
does indeed involve us in great difficulties. But there 
are some general signs of mind which we all usually 
regard as unmistakable, and some cases of lack that 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 21 

seem to us to exclude the presence of any functions 
such as the psychologist studies. 

In the most general way of viewing the matter, beings 
that seem to us to possess minds show in their physical 
life what we may call a great and discriminating sensi- 
tiveness to what^ goes on at any present time in their 
environment. And by this their sensitiveness we here ■ 
mean something which, though a sign of mind, is it- 
self purely physical, viz., a capacity, observable from 
without, to adjust themselves by fitting movements, or 
by their internal physical functions, to what takes place 
near them. This sensitiveness is called discriminating 
because it is never a mere tendency to respond to every 
sort of change at random, or to all effective changes in 
the same way ; but it is a tendency to respond to some 
changes {e.g. light or sound) rather than to others, and 
to various changes in various fitting ways. To be sure, 
plants also show very many signs of well-adjusted re- 
sponses to the changes in their environments. And 
even so those functions of animals which need show 
no signs of any mental accompaniments {e.g. gland 
secretions, or the regulation of the body's temperature) 
are also discriminatingly sensitive, in the physical sense, 
to external conditions. But the matter is here first one 
of degree. Greater, quicker, or else more highly elabo- 
rate is the sensitiveness of the beings that appear to 
have minds, as it is shown in their expressive functions. 
Duller, or slower, or else simpler, appears the phys- 



22 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ical sensitiveness of the non-mental being or function 
when the environment changes. 

But it is not merely this very general difference in 
degree which we note when we consider this discrimi- 
nating sensitiveness as a general sign of the presence 
of mind. If we come closer to the facts, we next note 
that the general sensitiveness of the beings that have 
minds determines itself, as we watch it, in various 
special ways, and expresses itself in conduct, whose 
relation to the former experience of the creature in 
question, and whose apparent spontaneity and varia- 
bility it concerns us to study. Let us, therefore, ex- 
amine a little more closely the various classes of signs 
of mind. 

§ II. (i) The sensitiveness of the psychically en- 
dowed beings first manifests itself by what, with a 
ready sympathy, we easily interpret as signs of satis- 
faction or of dissatisfactio7t, of pleasure or of pain, 
and of various emotions. These signs, in their simplest 
forms, are so well known that we need hardly describe 
them. Where, as in the earthworm, we can detect 
nothing that we ordinarily call intelligence, we seem 
to be able to note the signs of pain. Writhing, with- 
drawal from a source of injury, and other simple move- 
ments of an obviously protective character, are such 
elementary signs of dissatisfaction. Still other move- 
ments, even in very low forms of life, seem to indicate 
satisfaction. Higher up in the animal scale we meet 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 23 

with reactions of fear, of anger, of joy, of the more 
elaborate forms of desire, and, in the end, of numerous 
other emotional states. We may for the present class 
all these as the Signs of Feeling. The beings that 
have minds thus seem to us, from the first, to show 
signs of more or less immediately vahnng, or estimat- 
ing, their ozvn state, or their own relation to their 
environment. 

It must be remarked that we are not here at all con- 
cerned with the question whether our usual interpreta- 
tion of these kinds of feelings in case of lower animals, 
and especially in case of animals far distant from our- 
selves, is an actually correct interpretation. In case of 
human beings, our interpretations of such signs of men- 
tal life are subject to a social control that makes us 
able to criticise, with more or less success, their ac- 
curacy. But in case of lower animals, such control is 
no longer possible. Nevertheless, the signs of mental 
life that we seem to get, the movements that we are 
disposed to interpret as of psychical significance, in 
case of organisms decidedly distant in character from 
our own, are often so simple as to suggest at once a 
certain useful analysis of our own mental processes, 
when we compare the latter with the mental processes 
which these creatures seem to exhibit. For the human 
being shows us signs of feehng that are inseparable 
from the signs which he gives us of his intelligence or 
of his volition. Hence we do not at once so easily dis- 



24 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tinguish between his feelings and the rest of his mental 
life. The lower organism that shows no indications of 
higher intelligence, but that simply indicates what we 
readily take to be a state of feeling, may indeed not 
be exhibiting to us any genuine sign of consciousness 
whatever. Or, at least, if the signs do stand for a gen- 
uine consciousness, the psychologist may be unable to 
interpret the facts with the clearness possible in case 
of human beings. Yet the analogy of these simpler 
reactions to certain aspects, present in the behaviour 
of human beings, are useful to us for the purpose of 
beginning an analysis both of the functions and of 
the mental processes that appear in connection with 
higher organisms. Hence the use of these symptoms 
that, while extremely simple, still seem to us to mani- 
fest mental life. We cite them here, not because their 
interpretation is psychologically certain, but because 
they attract our attention to an aspect of mental life 
which we shall henceforth distinguish, namely, the as- 
pect of the feelings. 

§ 12. (2) The second manifestation of the sensitive- 
ness of beings that appear to us to have minds takes 
the form of tendencies on their part to discriminate 
between the various kinds of physical facts and pro- 
cesses in their environment, to react to some and not 
to others, and to react in such a way, to those by 
which they are influenced, as seems to show us that 
they discriminate between these various classes of 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 2$ 

physical facts. The manifestations of sensitiveness 
which thus appear are very closely bound up with 
those signs of feeling, that is of satisfaction and 
dissatisfaction, which we have just characterised. On 
the other hand, these signs of sensitiveness to the 
physical differences of the environment tend from 
the very first to a far greater specialisation than is 
possessed by the mere signs of feeling as such. 
Thus, the creature endowed with what we take to be 
mental characteristics may appear to be sensitive to 
the presence of light, and sensitive to differences in 
intensity of light or in the colour of the light. Or it 
may respond to considerable jars and shocks which 
occur in the physical environment. Or again, it may 
behave differently according to whether the more deli- 
cate form of vibration which constitutes a sound is 
present or not, or according as it is touched or not 
by an external physical object. Its reactions in the 
presence of such stimuli may take the simple form of 
approaching the source of the stimuli, or of otherwise 
moving so as to increase the stimuli, as if the resulting 
experiences were agreeable. Or the reactions may seem 
to express dissatisfaction with some stimulus, through 
a tendency to remove the organism from exposure 
thereto. But on the basis of these more fundamental 
and simple reactions of approach and retreat there 
develop, in all higher creatures, a very richly varied 
collection of responses for which the only general 



26 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

description is that they tend to be different for different 
stimuli, and the same for the same stimulus. Thus, 
the reactions to Hght tend to include the acts 
which we interpret as looking. They may also tend 
to involve a vast number of reactions which we 
interpret as involving discriminations of colours and 
shades. And similar varieties exist in case of other 
senses. 

Now it is true that, in all the higher animals, such 
discriminating sensitiveness shows itself, at least in 
the animal that has for some time been exposed to 
disturbance, principally in connection with the signs 
of mind that we shall mention in our subsequent 
enumeration — that is, in connection with the signs of 
what is called recognition, of intellect, or of choice. 
Yet all the higher and more complex reactions of an 
animal must depend upon its power to discriminate 
between the various disturbances that come to it from 
without. Whatever habits it may acquire, however 
much it may seem to be independent of its present 
situation, and dependent upon its past experience, still 
its present behaviour is, in all normal cases, sure to 
be decidedly influenced by its present relation to its 
environment. The signs of mind thus obtained are 
the Signs of Sensory Experience; and so the dis- 
criminating sensitiveness of any creature to the im- 
pressions which the environment is constantly making 
upon its organism is, quite apart from the relation 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 27 

of this sensitiveness to the signs of feeling, a highly 
important factor in determining our estimate of the 
sort of mental life that the creature possesses. 

§ 13. It seems well to add here some words as to 
the psychological uses and the limitations of the pres- 
ent class of the signs of mind. In our intercourse 
with human beings we sometimes too readily overlook 
the importance of the present relations of the organism 
to the environment as determining what goes on in 
mental life. Thus, a teacher may be disposed to 
charge a pupil with stupidity, when a closer exami- 
nation reveals the fact that the defect in the child's 
conduct is due to some slighter derangement of sense 
organs. So the short-sighted or the astigmatic pupil 
may be accused of stupidity, or inattentiveness, or even 
of malicious unwillingness to study, because his defect 
of vision makes him unable to discriminate objects seen 
on a blackboard at a certain distance, or in certain rela- 
tionships to one another. Similar accusations may be 
even more easily made with injustice in case a pupil suf- 
fers from a slight deafness. In all such instances the 
failure to make a correct diagnosis of mental life de- 
pends upon not observing, or upon not interpreting cor- 
rectly, the signs of the presence or absence of a certain 
condition of sensitiveness to present impressions, on the 
part of the organism in question. In other words, the 
signs of mental life are misinterpreted, in such wise 
that what is due to a defect of sense organs is judged 



28 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

as a defect of the intellect, or of the will, in other 
words, as a defect in the habits and in the self-direction 
of the pupil. It follows that the study of mind mitst 
always take account of the differetice between what is 
due to the present relation of the creature to its environ- 
me^it, and what is due to the relation between its present 
experience and its past acquisitions. 

§ 14. Meanwhile it is indeed also important to note, 
in the case of this form of the discriminating sensi- 
tiveness, quite as much as in the signs of feeling, that 
we are tmable to conclude front the tnere presence of a 
certain kind of reactio7i to sensory stimidation that 
the creatttre in guestioji is certainly possessed of such 
mental life as we ourselves have when similar dis- 
criminations take place in us. The general rule 
already mentioned holds, that decidedly low organ- 
isms and that in general the plants may respond in 
what seems to us a decidedly discriminating way to 
disturbances of the environment, when nevertheless 
the psychologist finds it of no service to his science 
to attribute mental life to the organisms in question. 

In recent biological research a tendency has conse- 
quently appeared to describe the apparently sensitive 
and discriminating reactions of lower organisms in 
terms of a phraseology that does not presuppose the 
existence of any mental life whatever. In such cases 
one names the stimulus that proves to be effective, such 
as light, colour, the touch of a solid object on the surface 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 29 

of the organism, or something of the kind. One names 
also the kind of reaction which this stimulus provokes 
in a given organism. Thus, some organisms turn them- 
selves towards the light when they are exposed to the 
light, or else go through certain reactions that end in 
getting them away from the light. Other organisms 
respond in a highly sensitive way to the presence of 
moving objects in their environment. In the researches 
here in question the effort is made to describe these 
characteristic reactions in terms of certain purely physi- 
cal and chemical processes which occur in the organ- 
isms exposed to the stimulations. And the reactions 
receive names accordingly — names intended merely to 
describe the relation of the organisrn to the stimulus, 
and perhaps to define the hypothetical nature of the 
physical or chemical process to which the reaction may 
be due. Thus, in botany, the term " heliotropism " has 
been used to name a well-known, typical reaction of 
certain plants when exposed to sunlight. Professor 
Loeb in a well-known book ^ has used the general term 
"tropism" to name any uniform and characteristic re- 
action of an organism to its environment such as is 
the turning of a plant to the light, or the flying of a 
moth into the flame. Such a "tropism" Loeb explains 
as due to physical and chemical processes. From this 
point of view, the presence of what we call discriminat- 

^ Loeb, Co7ftparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psy- 
chology. New York, Putnams, 1900, 



30 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ing sensitiveness in the responses of an organism, is, by 
itself alone, only a proof of the presence of certain 
physical processes occurring in the organism when it is 
disturbed in a particular way. From the point of view 
of Loeb it is not even any essential character of these 
" tropisms " that they involve a nervous system. Simple 
organisms that possess no nervous system also show 
these " tropisms." Organisms normally possessed of a 
nervous system may retain a considerable part of their 
discriminating sensitiveness even when, by experimen- 
tal interference, their nervous mechanisms have been 
put out of function, so far as the " tropisms " in ques- 
tion are concerned. 

Furthermore, even in ourselves, in whom our power 
to discriminate between the various disturbances that 
affect our organs of sense, is certainly bound up with 
our conscious and mental functions, it nevertheless 
remains the case that the activities of our sense organs 
are due to physical and chemical processes of the same 
general kind as those that occur in organisms so low that 
the followers of Loeb would regard them as showing no 
sufficient evidence of the presence of mind. It fol- 
lows that discriminating sensitiveness to the present dis- 
turbances of 07 ir sense oi'gans is never by itself alone a 
sufficient sign of zvhat the psychologist is obliged to re- 
gard as a mental process. Nevertheless, in beings that 
for otJier reasons we regard as possessed of viitid, there is 
no doubt that this discriminating sensitiveness possesses 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 3 1 

a very great importance for the interpretation of what 
mental life is taking place. Here, as so often elsewhere, 
the higher involves the lower. If we merely see a crea- 
ture respond to the lesser differences in his physical 
environment, we are indeed not sure what sort of mind 
this creature possesses, or whether he possesses any 
mind at all, so far as the psychologist can hope to study 
his life. But, on the other hand, if a creature does pos- 
sess a mind, we can never understand this mind unless 
we know what discriminating sensitiveness is present. 

It also remains true that where we are sure of the 
presence of tnind, we observe a very highly developed and 
varied sensitiveness to sense impression to be present, 
whenever the other signs of mind grow mimeroiis and 
important. Thus, the artist is distinguished from other 
men not merely by his acquired habits, and by his voli- 
tions, but by his sensitiveness to certain special disturb- 
ances of his sense organs. He responds to colours or to 
tone, either in a more discriminating way, or in a more 
emotional way, than other men show. In general, the 
genius of any type is such because of the sort of sensi- 
tiveness that he exhibits to certain kinds of present 
experience, as well as because of the habits and the 
voluntary tendencies that he ultimately develops on 
the basis of this peculiar sensitiveness. The mechanic, 
the naturalist, the business man, the administrator, the 
philosopher, no matter how highly developed their other 
functions may be, differ from one another by virtue of 



32 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the sorts of discrimination that they show in dealing, 
from moment to moment, with the condition of their 
environment as it passes before them. Where one's 
senses do not discriminate, one's thought is incapable 
of forming abstract ideas such as are adequate to the 
facts. Persons who do not possess certain senses may 
develop a very high degree of intelligence. But the 
character of this intelligence is profoundly affected by 
the defects of sensation to which such persons are sub- 
ject. While the relation between sense experience and 
acquired habit will become a little clearer farther on, it 
is already possible to say that, to adapt an old phrase, 
there is nothing in the intellect which is not affected by 
what occurs in the region of the senses ; so that as our 
sensitiveness to present stimulations varies, our whole 
mental constitution, even on the highest level, is af- 
fected. Hence, the signs of discriminating sensitiveness 
remain among the most important of the evidences that 
we can use in analysing mental life, and in discovering 
the laws that determine its development. 

§ 15. We have now considered two aspects of that 
discriminating sensitiveness to present stimuli which the 
beings that seem to us to have minds manifest, viz., the 
signs of feeling and of sensory experience. But we said 
above that the relation of a creature's sensitiveness to 
its former experience would also interest us. In fact, a 
still more remarkable aspect of animal sensitiveness 
than the ones yet noticed appears, in simple forms, 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 33 

decidedly low down in the scale, becomes in certain lines 
of evolution rapidly more and more important higher 
up, and reaches its highest expression in man. The 
animal, and especially the vertebrate animal, in propor- 
tion to its elevation in the mental scale, shows a disposi- 
tion to be determined in its present action by what has 
happened to it in the past. That is, it is not merely sensi- 
tive in particular ways to particular changes ; but it seems 
to learn by experience. What response the organism 
makes at any given time is determined not merely by its 
inherited structure, nor yet by present sensory disturb- 
ances, but, in addition, by the results of former stimuli, 
which have affected it during its intercourse with its 
world. This capacity to be moulded by experience 
greatly elaborates the discriminating sensitiveness of the 
^organism that is able thus to appear to learn. Wher- 
ever this capacity assumes its higher and more complex 
forms, the signs of such plasticity, of such power to be 
taught by the world in which the animal lives, consti- 
tute, when taken together, the signs of intelligence, as 
well as the signs of habitual voluntary conduct. 

It is true that, in ourselves, nervous functions which 
seem to have no mental aspect, are still often moulded 
by experience. Not every case then of this sort of 
plasticity is itself a sign of mental life. In fact, all the 
so-called " acquired characters " of animal organisms 
plainly involve, in some measure, a capacity to be 
moulded by physical experiences. But, once more, the 



34 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

matter is one of degree. The power to show the effects 
of past experience is, in its more elaborate forms, the 
most persuasive of all the signs of the presence of 
mind. Especially convincing is this sign when it ap- 
pears as a power to apply the results of former ex- 
perience in the adjustment of an animal's actions to 
decidedly novel conditions. When wild animals, after 
having experienced something of the nature of traps, 
become especially skilful in detecting and avoiding new 
sorts of traps, we do not easily doubt that this is a sign 
of some sort of intelligence. When ( as is narrated in 
an account quoted by Romanes) an elephant, taught to 
pick up articles and pass them to the man who is on 
his back, detects at once the character of some novel 
article (^e.g. a sharp knife), and guided by some subtler 
indication, handles this novel article carefully, or with 
a careless haste, we are sure that this acquired skill 
indicates the presence of mental life of some highly 
developed kind. 

§ 1 6. Decidedly different is the case where the ac- 
tions of an animal show great apparent present skill in 
their successful adjustment to surrounding conditions, 
while, nevertheless, the adjustment in question seems to 
be largely an inherited function of the animal, which is 
only in part, perhaps in very small part, moulded by the 
animal's own past experience. In this case we call the 
actions that we observe cases of relatively unmodified 
instinct. The signs of unmodified instinct cannot of 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 35 

themselves be regarded as signs of what, from the psy- 
chologist's point of view, is identical with intelligence or 
with conscious volition. The most marvellous develop- 
ments of unmodified instinctive functions occur in in- 
vertebrate animals, especially among the insects ( e.g. 
ants, bees, and wasps). While these instincts get in 
some respect readjusted to passing experience, they are 
sometimes remarkably perfect apart from the influences 
of any past experience. The instincts of the higher 
vertebrates are generally a good deal moulded by the 
experiences of the individual animal, so that although 
an important aspect or portion of the functions may be 
directly inherited, the mind of such an animal is never- 
theless subject in its growth to the laws of the intelli- 
gence and is here seldom free from great modifications 
during the life of its possessor. In man the inherited 
instincts, although they lie at the basis of all our intel- 
lectual life, get so much modified and moulded by our 
experience that we generally fail to recognise their pres- 
ence as instincts. Yet, as James and others have 
shown, man has, at the outset, an extremely large num- 
ber of elaborate and inherited instinctive predispositions 
to given sorts of conduct. 

In so far, however, as we leave out of account the rel- 
atively unalterable inherited instincts, we can then say 
that by the signs of intelligence and of the presence of 
voluntary although habitual conduct, we mean those 
signs which sJiotv an animaVs plasticity in the presence of 



36 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

experience, and especially its skill in adjusting the results 
of past experience to the tneeting of novel situations. 

§ 17. It will be observed that, in case of the class of 
signs of the presence of mind here in question, all such 
signs are intimately bound up with those described 
under the previous head, and cannot exist apart from 
them. The animal which at present shows that its con- 
duct is affected by the results of former experience, 
generally displays this influence by being sensitive to 
aspects of its environment to which it would otherwise 
not adjust itself. Furthermore, as we shall see when 
we come further to examine the mental processes which 
accompany intelligent behaviour, many of these pro- 
cesses involve certain mental states called images, or 
ideas, or called by similar names. Such states we shall 
find to be similar to these which present external dis- 
turbance of sense organs would arouse. And, as we 
shall also find, the existence of these various states and 
processes proves to be explicable only in case we lay 
stress upon the relation between the animal's present 
external sense disturbances and its former experiences. 
In other words, even its present sensitiveness involves 
mental features which, whenever it is really intelligent, 
are different from what they would have been in case 
certain other experiences had not preceded them. We 
are consequently unable to deal with the mental pro- 
cesses involved in genuinely intelligent actions, with- 
out taking account of something more than the present 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 37 

discriminating sensitiveness of the animal's organism. 
Yet this something affects the present state of its con- 
sciousness. Hence the study of phenomena of the 
present class is very naturally distinguished from the 
study of the phenomena, physical or mental, which 
have to do with the present disturbance of the animal's 
organs of sense, and is nevertheless very closely bound 
up with the latter study. 

§ 18. There seems to be need of a name whereby we 
may distinguish and characterise the group of signs of 
mind here in question. We have already used the 
name " plasticity." But this name naturally suggests 
present modifications of an animal's behaviour, as well as 
the relation of its present behaviour to its former life. 
The name "intelligence," which we have also used, im- 
plies distinguishing certain mental processes as having 
to do with the knowledge about its world which the 
intelligent animal shows. While this name is indeed 
applicable in case of all the functions here in question, 
it does not, so expressly as we could wish, lay stress 
upon the fact that the intelligent activities are always 
due, in creatures such as ourselves, to the influence of 
former experiences upon present habits and upon 
present consciousness. Moreover, all these intelligent 
activities are also more or less expressions of will. 
They constitute conduct as well as show intellect. 
Furthermore, we need at this stage of our inquiry a 
name that lays stress quite as much upon the externally 



38 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

observable character of certain signs of mind as upon 
the inner character of the accompanying mental pro- 
cesses themselves. I suggest therefore as a good name 
for the present type of signs of mental life the term 
DOCILITY, By the docility of an ajiiinal we mean the 
capacity shown in its acts to adjust these acts not merely 
to a present situation, biU to the relation between this 
present situation and what has occurred in the former life 
of this organism. The same term "docility" we shall 
also come to apply later to the mental processes which 
accompany these external manifestations of the ten- 
dency to profit by former experience. The term 
" docility " is chosen therefore as a convenient name both 
for the physical manifestations of the animal's power 
to profit by experience, and for the mental processes 
that accompany this same power. 

It will be noticed that we do not here distinguish 
signs of the possession of intellect from signs of the 
possession of a will. As we shall hereafter see, the 
so-called will and intellect of ordinary psychological 
study are but two aspects of a single process. 

§ 19. We now come to still another group of the 
signs of mental life. The adjustment of an organism 
to its environment involves everywhere not merely the 
reception of impressions from without, but the occurrence 
of responses which are in some sense initiated within the 
organism. All the signs of mind without exception 
include the reaction of the creature that possesses the 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 39 

mind to the world in which it Hves. Yet in some cases 
our attention, as we study an organism, is more attracted 
by what happens to the organism, that is, by what comes 
to it from without ; in other instances our attention is 
more attracted by the novel character of the response itself ^ 
which the creature makes to the conditions in which we 
find it. In the one case we are disposed to say that the 
animal which we are observing merely shows signs of 
being disturbed. In the other case, we are likely to say 
that this ajiimal shows "spontaneity" of movement. 
Now when we speak of " spontaneity,'^ we speak of 
what common sense regards as one of the most charac- 
teristic signs of the presence of mind. Yet before we 
can estimate the value of this sign, we have to consider 
somewhat carefully in what sense spontaneity is ever 
observable in the actions of a living creature, and in 
what sense this spontaneity, when it appears to exist, 
can be of any use to us as a mark of mental life. 

§ 20. The discriminating sensitiveness with which we 
began the series of the signs of mental life generally 
does not seem to us to be something very noticeably 
spontaneous on the part of the animal that shows it. 
When a creature is disturbed by an external cause, and 
shows signs of pleasure or of pain, we have indeed its 
own reaction to its world — a reaction which may be 
very characteristic of its own special type of life. But, 
on the other hand, the particular reaction seems to us 
to be rather directly due to the disturbance than to be 



40 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

something initiated from within the animal organism. 
Yet in some sense such relative initiation from within 
always takes place. For what the disturbed creature 
does, depends on what nervous centres it has. On the 
other hand, when, in the absence of any disturbance 
that, at the moment, seems to us notable, a living 
creature moves about (as so often happens in very vari- 
ous grades of animal life), we then speak of " spontane- 
ous movements," and easily think of them as initiated 
directly from within the organism. If an animal is 
obviously disturbed by light or by sound, and shows 
merely the usual signs of seeing or of hearing, we are 
likely to regard this mainly as a direct response to an 
outer impression. But when a dog, in the absence of 
his master, begins to show signs of restlessness, and, 
running to the window, looks out in a way that we 
regard as indicating a desire to look for his master's 
return, this we are disposed to consider a relatively 
"spontaneous activity." Or when a man, made angry 
by a blow, returns the blow instantly, we may regard 
this merely as an instinctive response to a present dis- 
turbance. But when another man, after brooding over 
an injury, writes a challenge to a duel, or when he plans 
the murder of his enemy, common sense regards this as 
a relatively " spontaneous activity," and may attribute it 
to what is called the " free will " of the individual in 
question. 

But our estimate of this contrast between the so- 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 4 1 

called " direct response " of a living being to its 
environment, and the apparently " spontaneous activ- 
ity " of the same or of some other living creature, 
appears in a somewhat different hght if we consider, 
not merely what we have called the present discrimi- 
nating sensitiveness of the creature in question, but 
that docility of a higher organism upon which we 
have now insisted. We know that what an animal 
at present does may be a result, not merely of the 
momentary stimulation, but also of great numbers of 
past habits. These habits may affect present con- 
duct in such wise that what is now done is rather a 
repetition of some former act than a fitting response 
to a present situation. Thus, when a tune " runs in 
one's head," the singing of the tune may seem to an 
external observer a very *' spontaneous " kind of 
action. Closer examination may, however, show how 
the singing of the tune is due to the past habit of 
singing it, and to the fact that this habit has been 
reawakened in some way through its accidental con- 
nection with a passing present experience. It results 
that, when we take into account the combined ejfect of 
sensitiveness and docility, we have very much to limit 
the extent to which we can jtidge the activities of any 
animal to be even relatively spontaneous. And from 
this point of view the so-called spontaneous move- 
ment of the undisturbed animal may turn out to be 
habitual adjustments to stimuli — and to stimuli that 



42 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

we have failed to notice in our observations of the 
creature in question. Thus, when we take into con- 
sideration both the present impressions and the habits 
of the being in question, the whole appearance of 
" spontaneity " may seem to vanish ; and we may 
come to regard the reaction as a purely " mechanical 
adjustment," determined by current events and pre- 
vious habits. From this point of view, even the 
plans of the revengeful man, slowly maturing, and 
resulting in his challenge or in his crime, may now 
seem to us to involve no new evidences of mind 
besides those which we may characterise in terms of 
sensitiveness and docility. For his enemy has aroused 
him, and he is by habit a fighting man. 

§ 21. Nevertheless, when we follow the activities 
of beings high up in the scale of mental life, and 
even when we follow some of the processes which 
occur lower down in the animal kingdom, where the 
evidences of mental life seem doubtful, we do meet 
many signs which we fail thus easily to describe in 
terms either of the present discriminating sensitive- 
ness, or of the gradually acquired habits of the 
organism, or of both combined, so far as we can at 
the outset judge of them. In case of our own minds, 
we also observe a good many processes which we 
cannot readily reduce to the discoverable laws of our 
docility, and which we are equally unable to explain 
by a reference to the present disturbance of our 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 43 

sense organs. That all such phenomena must con- 
form to some sort of law, every psychological investi- 
gation naturally presupposes. For a scientific inquiry 
is concerned with what one hopes to reduce to rule. 
On the other hand, the explanation of such phenom- 
ena may actually have to be sought in other direc- 
tions than those which we follow when we consider 
merely our sensitiveness and our docility. 

This is not the place to determine as yet whether 
such special explanations of the processes in question 
will finally prove to be necessary. We are considering, 
thus far, merely the signs of mind. What interests us is 
that there are phenomena which, prima facie, suggest 
that something at least relatively spontaneous is occur- 
ring — something due to what goes on within an organ- 
ism, and something not easily describable either in 
terms of the present disturbances of sense organs or 
in terms of the already acquired habits of the organ- 
ism. Phenomena of this kind appear most prominently 
in such cases as the following. First, an animal may 
be in a situation where it will have to learn a new 
art of some kind, in case it is to become suitably adapted 
to its environment. For example, an imprisoned ani- 
mal may have to learn how to get out of the cage, 
in case it is to reach food or comfort. Its present 
sense impressions do not lead to successful responses. 
Its already acquired habits may prove, at first, in- 
adequate to guide it to successful escape. It is, namely, 



44 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

not intelligent enough to adjust these habits to the 
novel situation through any sort of direct examination 
of the facts before it. The animal may struggle for 
a good while, and then finally escape. In thus escap- 
ing it may establish new habits, which will lead it to 
escape more readily if imprisoned again. In this 
case, it indeed does not occur to us that the process 
is one involving anything incapable of reduction to 
law. But, on the other hand, we may have to take 
account of other factors besides the simple docility 
of the creature, and of something over and above its 
inherited instincts, before we can fully understand the 
process whereby this art was learned. The descrip- 
tion of what happens, in so far as we can get such 
description, does indeed turn out to be, in the sup- 
posed case, comparatively simple. A process of " trial 
and error " seems to take place, and this process 
results, after numerous failures, in a chance success. 
Yet this very process certainly involves features that 
are somewhat different from those by which an 
animal which has been repeatedly fed learns the 
place where its food is customarily given to it. And 
it may therefore prove to be worth while to give a 
special name to the kind of process which this series 
of trials and errors involves. 

Or, in the second place, on a very much higher level 
of mental life, an inventor, or a scientific . investigator, 
may long stand baffled in presence of a problem be- 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 45 

longing to his art or science. He may finally solve the 
problem. In doing so, he may at the same time invent 
a new method of procedure which henceforth becomes 
applicable, by himself or by other men, to similar prob- 
lems. The process of discovering this original solution 
of the problem may. well involve elements that need a 
name of their own. Neither one who observes from 
without the activities of such a person, nor one who 
examines from within their psychological characteris- 
tics, may be able to describe what happens wholly in 
terms of the discriminating sensitiveness to experience 
which the organism manifests, or which the mind pos- 
sesses at any one moment. Nor may such an observer 
be able to reduce the process to the laws governing the 
ordinary docility of this organism or of this mind. In 
such a case the signs of mind visible to an outward 
observer seem to need a name of their own. The 
mental processes involved seem to stand somewhat by 
themselves, and to suggest, if they do not necessitate, 
peculiar modes of describing their laws. 

Or, finally, a man in a perplexing situation, a states- 
man in the presence of some new political problem, a 
reformer at some crisis in social affairs, may, after long 
deliberation, resolve upon some highly original mode 
of conduct. In such cases the result may be momen- 
tous for the whole subsequent history of one or of many 
nations. We may or we may not be wrong to refer the 
decision in such a case to what common sense calls the 



46 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

"free will" of the man in question. It may or it may 
not turn out that the act of choice was as necessary 
as is sneezing or digestion. But whatever the result 
of inquiry may be, the act as it stands possesses for 
any observer characteristics which seem to indicate a 
peculiar kind of mental life. This type of mental life 
may need a name for which our former terms, " sensi- 
tiveness " and " docility," appear distinctly inadequate. 
§ 22. In all these classes of cases it will be observed 
that we need not suppose anything of an entirely novel 
character to have occurred, and that in fact we need not 
make any presuppositions as to whether any essentially 
novel factors are involved at all. But it is also certain 
that such learning of new arts, such inventions, such 
apparently original decisions, are phenomena that have 
a very considerable importance as symptoms of mind, 
and that tend to suggest to us a type of mental life 
somewhat distinct from any other. As to the fitting 
name to give to responses of this kind, we have already 
pointed out that they very readily suggest the word 
"spontaneity." The imprisoned animal, apart from its 
previous training, appears ^^spontaneously''' to learn 
how to escape. The inventor ^^spontaneously" solves 
the problem. The man at the practical crisis shows 
what we call his power of "spontaneous'''' choice. Yet 
the word "spontaneous," although in common usage, has 
unhappy suggestions attending it. It seems to imply 
that something occurs apart from any conditions what- 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 47 

ever. And as we have seen, psychology has no inter- 
est in recognising uncaused events. And very obviously 
we can never observe that a given event has no causes, 
while here we are merely endeavouring to find a name 
whereby to characterise a type of observed events. 
For the same reason, the term " creativeness " has 
false suggestions. The most of the phenomena that 
are here in question have very prominently some of 
the characters which common sense has in mind when 
we speak of "acts of will" or of "voluntary" pro- 
cesses. Yet, as we shall later see, the term " will " is so 
variously used by common sense as to make it conven- 
ient for our present purpose to avoid determining our 
classification of the signs of mind by means of a use 
of that word. Much that is relatively habitual is also 
voluntary. All voluntary conduct depends in part on 
docility. And so far as we are at present concerned, 
these relatively novel acts, these signs of apparent 
spontaneity, which we are defining, may prove to be 
either what common sense calls voluntary, or what are 
to be regarded as involuntary. Their novelty, and the 
fact that they cannot be reduced by any direct observa- 
tion to the signs of the two former types, that is, to 
the signs of the sensitiveness or to the signs of docility 
— this is here what we are concerned to emphasise. 

We are aided in finding a name for such processes 
by remembering that, in the modern theory of evolu- 
tion, a difference has long been recognised in the char- 



48 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

acteristics possessed by living organisms, between what 
is due to heredity and what is due to variation. The 
characters of any organism are, namely, either repeti- 
tions of ancestral characters, or else characters that 
appear in the individual organism, without having 
been due to such repetition, unchanged, of ancestral 
traits. And of the variations, that is, of the new indi- 
vidual characters that appear in an organism, some 
may be acquired during the life of the individual in 
question. Such variations, in fact, are all those due to 
injuries and mutilations, and all those due to the for- 
tunes and experiences of the individual organism. But, 
on the other hand, some of the individual variations 
may be due to congenital causes ; so that, in addition to 
what it inherits from its ancestors, the organism has 
from the very beginning relatively independent vari- 
ations, which are characteristic of itself, and which 
are not repetitions of anything which its ancestors 
possessed. 

Now in that portion of the life of an organism which 
interests the psychologist, the successive activities that 
appear fall into classes which somewhat roughly cor- 
respond to the classes of phenomena in which the theory 
of evolution is interested when it considers the relation 
of the life-history of each organism to the race from 
which the organism sprung. To the process of hered- 
ity in the race corresponds, in the individual, what 
we have called its docihty; for by heredity an organ- 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 49 

ism of one generation repeats the characters of its 
ancestors, while the docihty of an individual involves 
the tendency of its present acts to repeat its past 
conduct. On the other hand, to what the evolutionists 
call the variations of the individual organism when 
compared to its race, there correspond, in the life- 
history of each individual, the relatively novel acts 
and experiences of this individual — the acts and ex- 
periences, namely, which are not repetitions of its 
own former acts and experiences. Now some of these 
novelties in the life of an individual seem to us to be 
more directly due, as we have seen, to external disturb- 
ances. But, in case of the facts that we are now con- 
sidering, we come to variations in the conduct of an 
individual which seem to us to be due, in part, neither 
to external disturbances nor to the effects of former 
habits. These new acts play the same part in the 
life of an individual that what the Darwinian theory 
calls spontaneous variations play in the life of a race. 
Just as congenital variations are due, not to the ex- 
ternal disturbances that come to an organism, but to 
the processes that brought it into existence, so here, 
in the present class of the signs of mind, we have to 
do with variations or novelties of conduct that can- 
not easily be referred either to the former habits or 
to the present sense experiences of the organism in 
question. 

In consequence the characteristic of the signs of 



50 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

mental life which we have here in question might well 
be summed up by speaking of the variation of conduct 
in general, or by using the term "variability," or the 
other term " spontaneous variability," to characterise 
the process in question. Yet in order to avoid the 
various confusions to which the term " spontaneous 
variation " has given rise in evolutionary theory, and in 
order to avoid also the indefiniteness that attaches to 
the otherwise used and extremely general terms "varia- 
tion" and "variability," it seems better to find still a 
new, although a closely related term, for the particular 
ki7id of variability here in question. 

I propose then to call the signs of mind which are 
here in question, signs of Initiative, or more particu- 
larly of Mental Initiative. The word "initiative" 
suggests that where initiative is present there is at least 
considerable apparent novelty of behaviour on the part 
of the creature that exhibits initiative. The word is 
not meant to convey the conception that the initiative 
in question involves independence of definite causal 
connection. We have no difficulty in speaking of a 
new organism as " initiated " by the process of genera- 
tion. Yet it does not occur to us to suppose that the 
new organism is disconnected from its ancestors, or 
that its ancestors are not the cause of its initiation. To 
speak of the beginning or of the initiation of anything, 
is simply to call attention to an observable fact, and 
is not to make any presupposition as to the presence 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 5 1 

or absence of lawful connection between this fact and 
previous phenomena. In speaking therefore of men- 
tal initiative, I merely call attention to the fact that 
there are certain of the signs of mind which are pre- 
sented to US by the appearance of relatively novel acts in 
the life of an intelligent creatnre, in cases where these 
novel acts cannot be directly referred to the present 
external disturbances to which the organism is subject. 
The acquisition of new ways of behaviour, which are 
not merely impressed upon the organism from without, 
the appearance of inventive activities, the novel deeds 
of genius, the momentous choices, upon which so much 
in the life of individuals and of nations may depend 
— these are all instances of the signs of mental 
initiative. 

§ 23. It remains, even in this introductory sketch, 
to compare the signs of initiative with the signs of 
docility, as evidences of the existence of mental pro- 
cesses, and to indicate the significance of the signs of 
initiative. It must be distinctly admitted that it is 
only where tJie signs of mental initiative appear in close 
connection with the signs of docility that they are of 
importance for the psychologist, or furnish any notable 
evidence of the presence of significant mental life. 
The mere fact that an organism does something which 
it has never done before, and which is not wholly de- 
scribable in terms of its present sensitiveness to ex- 
ternal disturbances, is in itself, apart from its relation 



52 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

to intelligent activities, no sign that a valuable mental 
function is going on. Thus, the first epileptic fit which 
should appear in the life of one who was to be hence- 
forth an epileptic sufferer, would not be by itself any 
sign of a psychologically important process, although 
there might be some reason to speak of it as an ap- 
parently " spontaneous " physiological occurrence. For 
the epileptic fit is not, like the new invention, a varia- 
tion of the already significant intelligent habits of the 
organism. In any case, the act which manifests men- 
tal initiative must have the character of a real adjust- 
ment to the environment, and must not be, like the 
epileptic fit, a failure of adjustment. Furthermore, 
even a new adjustment to the environment, in so far 
as it possesses simply the character of a coming to 
light of an inherited instinct, which has not previously 
entered into or been affected by the habits of the or- 
ganism, is a change possessing no such psychological 
significance as an invention or a novel choice may 
possess. In the lives of human beings the sudden 
appearance of instinctive functions not previously con- 
nected with the acquired habits of the organism occurs, 
except at some points in the early development of 
childhood, only in decidedly modified form. But in 
such changes of behaviour as occur when a child first 
walks, or when it rapidly passes to a new stage in the 
acquisition of language, or even when later in youth 
new relations to the opposite sex are determined by 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 53 

instincts which previous experience has not at all ade- 
quately wrought upon — in all such cases the vari- 
ability of mental processes involved has a decidedly 
different significance from that possessed by the forms 
of mental initiative just exemplified. The sort of fnen- 
tal initiative which is especially in question in the present 
discnssion is that which appears when already acquired 
and intelligent habits arc decidedly altered, or are de- 
cidedly recombined, in such fashion as to bring to pass 
a novel readjustment to our e^ivironment . 

§ 24. Yet if inventions and critical choices are 
classic instances of mental initiative, our instance of 
the struggling animal, striving to escape from its 
cage, has already shown us that the elementary forms 
of mental initiative appear decidedly low down in the 
scale of animal activities. We shall find hereafter that 
the processes in question are very widely prevalent, 
in all the manifestations of mind. A general under- 
standing of how such processes are to be explained, 
despite the fact that they are not mere instances of 
docihty, and that they are not directly due to present 
sense impressions, will throw no small light upon what 
are usually regarded as amongst the obscurest ques- 
tions of psychological theory. Every teacher, in these 
days, hears a great deal of "self-activity," and of 
the supposed principle that every human mind in a 
very large measure determines its own choices, its 
ovv^n beliefs, and its own destiny. On the other hand. 



54 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

every student of mental phenomena becomes early 
acquainted with the view that all of our mental life 
is due to environment and to training. Our environ- 
ment impresses us, because we are discriminatingly 
sensitive. Our training becomes significant to us 
because of our docility. To say that environment 
and training suffice to determine our mental life in- 
evitably involves denying the presence in us of that 
"spontaneity" upon which the partisans of mental 
activity love to lay stress. But there are also many 
students of mental life who add to the factors called 
environment and training the now so well-known 
hereditary factor, which is expressed in the original 
constitution and in the permanent tendencies of our 
organism. But heredity appears, from the cus- 
tomary point of view, to be as decidedly opposed as 
are training and environment to the existing of spon- 
taneity. And those who regard heredity, environ- 
ment, and training as the sole factors determining 
our mental life, are usually regarded as necessarily 
opponents of those who look to "self-activity" as a 
significant factor in our growth. Plainly a decision 
as to the relation of all these factors, and as to the 
possible existence of anything worthy to be called 
" self -activity," depends upon a study of that side of 
mental life which the signs here in question bring to 
our notice. What we so far see is, that while some 
of the apparently spontaneous activities of animals 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 55 

and of men can indeed be explained by a more care- 
ful study of their present sensory disturbances, or 
of their past habits, some of these seemingly sponta- 
neous doings involve processes that seem more stub- 
bornly to resist a reduction to the two other types. 
It seems worth while to give these classes of phe- 
nomena, at least provisionally, their separate name. 
Plainly they include much of what is often referred 
to " free will." Plainly they also include a great 
many phenomena of mental variability which seem 
to be of a much less startling and momentous char- 
acter. But in so far as inventiveness also is included 
among the manifestations of the type here in ques- 
tion, these phenomena appear to include much of 
what is usually described as ingenuity, and so in- 
volve what is usually regarded as the intellect as well 
as what is commonly conceived to be the will. 

Here, therefore, as in the case of docility, the 
phenomena of mind which are under consideration 
include both those usually classed under the intellect, 
and those usually considered under the head of the 
will. For we show initiative both as to our know- 
ledge and as to our conduct. 

§ 25. Under four headings we have now discussed 
what amount in sum to tJiree provisionally distinct 
types of the signs of mind. The first type possesses 
two sub-types, whose difference is, for the psychol- 
ogist, of great practical importance. We accordingly 



56 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

discussed these two sub-types separately under our first 
and second heads. They were respectively the two 
soi'ts of signs of discriminating sensitiveness ; namely, 
the signs of Feeling, that is, of satisfaction and dis- 
satisfaction ; and the signs of a tendency to discrirrti- 
nate between the various Sensory Disturbances that 
come to our organism from without. The signs of 
these two types consisted throughout in modes of be- 
haviour of the organism ; for we are never able to dis- 
tinguish the signs of any sorts of mental states, apart 
from that reaction of the organism to its environment 
which accompanies these mental states. On the other 
hand these signs, so far as they went, directly indi- 
cated to us merely the organism's present state, and 
the relation of this state to external disturbances. The 
second type of the signs of mind, discussed under our 
third head, consisted of the signs of Docility. They 
are especially useful to the psychologist as indicating 
the presence of what is called Intelligence and of 
what is called Conduct. They are inevitably mingled 
with and inseparable from the signs of the first type. 
But they are signs of docility so far as they show us 
that tvhat the orgajtism now does depends upon zvhat it 
has done and upon what has happened to it in the 
past. On the higher level we regard these signs as 
convincing indications of the presence of mind ; and 
therefore the analysis of these signs and the study of 
their laws becomes of great aid to us in the compre- 



PHYSICAL SIGNS OF THE PRESENCE OF MIND 57 

hension of mental processes. The third type of the 
signs of mind we have defined as the signs of Men- 
tal Initiative. They are suggested to us by such 
variations of intelligent habits as cannot readily be 
explained either by the present sense disturbances or 
by the former experiences and habits of the organism 
in question. While they are often suggested to us 
by the phenomena that manifest what is often called 
the will, they also appear in case of the processes of 
the type of thoughtful invention ; and their relation 
to what is usually called the intellect, as well as to 
what is usually called the will, must form the topic 
of our later study. But by analysing these signs, 
even in this preliminary way, we have enabled our- 
selves to map out in advance the territory which 
psychology must attempt to study. 



CHAPTER III 

The Nervous Conditions of the Manifestation of 

Mind 

§ 26. The organic conditions for all these manifes- 
tations of mind is the presence of a nervous system. 
At all events, such signs of mental life as some have 
believed to be present in organisms too low to show us 
any differentiated nervous systems are such as to need 
here no further mention. The externally observable 
discriminating sensitiveness which everywhere accom- 
panies all the higher manifestation of mind is, physi- 
cally speaking, a property of nervous tissue. 

Leaving to the anatomist and the physiologist every 
extended description of the structure and functions of 
our nervous system and of its instruments, viz., the 
sense organs and the organs of muscular movement, 
the psychologist can here only try to show very sum- 
marily what characters of the nervous system most 
interest his own undertaking. 

The nervous system consists, for our purposes, of a 
vast collection of "elements," each one of which is a 
"nerve cell" that, in addition to its minute central mass, 
possesses prolongations which are either " nerve fibres " 

58 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 59 

or else are other so-called " processes," viz., minute 
and multiformly branching extensions of the substance 
of the nerve cell. These processes, extending, in the 
central nervous system, from one cell to the immediate 
neighbourhood of other cells, form an extremely com- 
plex network of finely divided threads of mosslike or of 
mouldlike collections of short and long threads and 
branchings. A current and authoritative but not per- 
fectly certain opinion holds that the processes of one 
cell probably never really unite either with the processes 
or with the central substance of any other cell. Thus 
each cell, with its processes, lies it would seem side by 
side with other cells, whose processes, intertwining like 
the foliage of neighbouring trees with its own processes, 
still never grow into its own substance, so that all 
these "elements," i.e. cells, each with its own exten- 
sions, are anatomically independent. The nerve fibres 
proper, which grow out of what are called the axis- 
cylinder processes of cells, run often for long dis- 
tances unbroken through the nervous system, either 
reaching their various terminal organs in the outer or 
" peripheral" portions of the body, or else coming to an 
end in tuftlike branchings in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the cells whose functional relation to their own 
parent cells they are destined to determine. Nerve 
fibres often divide into branches of equal value, or else 
send off, in their course through the central regions 
of the nervous system, many accessory branches, which 



60 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

may terminate as does the main fibre, but at points often 
far removed from one another. Thus any given fibre, 
with its branches and accessories, may serve to bring 
its parent cell into some sort of relation to many other 
regions of the central nervous system. On the other 
hand, the anatomical independence of the elements 
which has thus been probably made out suggests that 
every cell has some sort of relative and subordinate 
independence of function. When it has once received 
any disturbances, it probably sends out, through its 
processes and its fibre, its own sort of excitation ; but 
very possibly this excitation does not pass over from 
the terminations of the cell branches to any other ner- 
vous element without considerable alteration in form, 
and perhaps in degree. It has been suggested by the 
experimental work of several neurologists that what a 
cell does to its neighbours or to the more distant cells 
with which its fibres bring it into relation must be some- 
what analogous to "induction" as known in case of 
electrical phenomena. From this point of view the 
excitation of a cell through the excitation of its nerve 
fibre or by any other means may "induce" other cells, 
with which the first cell stands in relation, to give out, 
in their turn, their own form of excitement, which they 
then pass over by induction to yet other cells. In any 
case, the known general structure of the nervous system 
seems especially adapted (i) to the manifold propaga- 
tion of excitements in various directions, (2) to the con- 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 6 1 

stant variation of the form of this excitement as it passes 
from element to element of the nervous system, and (3) 
to the most complex influence of the excitations of one 
part of the nervous system upon the independently 
aroused excitations which happen to be present in other 
parts of the system. 

§ 27. The best-known division that exists in the 
functions of the nervous system is that between the 
sensory mid the motor fiinctions. Beginning in the more 
external or peripheral regions of the organism, disturb- 
ances are constantly passing inwards from the sense 
organs, where the fibres of the sensory nerves have 
their outward endings. These sensory fibres carry phys- 
ical disturbances of some still unknown form to the 
neighbourhood of more centrally situated cells, which 
in their turn may, and in general obviously do, send the 
excitation or its induced resultants to very various parts 
of the still more centrally situated nervous tissue. The 
rate at which the nervous disturbances are carried in 
nerves is in general known, although not so accurately 
in the sensory as in the motor nerves, and is from thirty 
to forty metres per second. In the meantime, centrally 
initiated physical disturbances are constantly passing 
outwards over motor nerves to the terminations of these 
nerves in muscles, glands, etc., where these disturbances 
produce complex effects upon the organs of voluntary 
and involuntary movement, upon the circulation, and 
upon the secretions. In general, the sensory nerves, in 



62 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

view of their actual relations to the rest of the organism, 
are so disposed as to carry disturbances only inwards, and 
the motor nerves so disposed as to carry only outwards, 
although this law seems to be not absolute, but only a 
resultant of the usual conditions. The sensory nerves 
terminate outwardly, as has just been said, in sense 
organs, which are in general so constructed as to expose 
their nerve fibres to only one sort of physical excita- 
tion (as the fibres of the optic nerve are normally 
exposed to the effects which Hght produces upon the 
retina, the auditory nerve to the effects of sound- 
waves, etc.). 

This division between sensory and motor nerves is, 
in the first instance, a purely physical matter, and does 
not by any means name functions that must have any 
direct relation to our mental states. For disturbances 
travelling inwards over sense nerves need not be passed 
on through the nerve centres until they reach the level 
of the cortex of the brain ; and unless they do reach the 
cortex, we have no sensory experience, and the sensory 
motor process then goes on without mental accompani- 
ment. Just so, very numerous motor currents pass out- 
wards from centres — i.e. from groups of cells situated 
wholly in the spinal cord or elsewhere below the level 
of the cortex — and are in no wise due to excitations 
aroused in the cortex. In such cases the motor pro- 
cesses in question have no relation to our will. A 
pigeon deprived of its brain hemispheres can fly, avoid- 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 63 

ing obstacles ; can perch, balance, walk, etc., when 
stimulated to such acts by appropriate sensory disturb- 
ances. It, however, no longer shows hunger, fear, love, 
or similar sorts of discriminating sensitiveness, and 
gives no sufficient signs of such intellectual life as 
would characterise an uninjured pigeon. If left alone, 
it rests in apparently absolute repose and indifference to 
its environment. Driven from one perch, it merely flies 
till it finds another. Thus the sensory excitations which 
reach the brainless pigeon's nervous centres produce, 
probably apart from any definite mental life, physical 
disturbances of cells, such as stimulate in an always 
rigidly determined serial succession (through the inter- 
mediation of motor nerves) just the right muscular fibres 
which are needed to produce each time the pigeon's acts 
of balancing, flying, or perching. Yet all this appears, 
in the end, to involve none of the watchful, often 
hesitant, tremulous, emotionally busy sensitiveness of 
the normal pigeon. The brainless pigeon seems like a 
delicate but strictly determined machine, which never 
really seeks to escape, and never shows the least normal 
concern for its own preservation, but merely perches 
when it touches a perch, flies when it is in the air, 
balances when it begins to fall — and all this with the 
stubbornness of a steadily working clock. 

So far, then, a sensory impression has appeared in our 
account as a physical disturbance that passes inwards 
from a sense organ over a sensory nerve. In the cen- 



64 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tral masses of cells such disturbances, occurring as they 
do, at any moment, in great numbers, produce changes 
that are often far-reaching, but that are usually deter- 
minate as regards their total outcome, and that often 
are so quite apart from any signs of intellect, of feeling, 
or of will. In most cases, however, the outcome, if defi- 
nite, is some sort of " adjustment to the environment," 
i.e. is of a nature to be, in general, serviceable to the 
life of the organism. The adjustment is modified by 
the endless interchange of excitations throughout the 
central nervous system, whose enormous numbers of 
relatively independent " elements," mutually inducing 
different forms of excitement in one another as soon as 
any of them are disturbed, tend both to the multiplica- 
tion and to the control of the effects of every disturb- 
ance. The useful movements that result are such as 
they are because, in the end, groups of muscle fibres 
get excited in a definite serial order for every complex 
act. And this serial order is determined by the total 
structure and the consequent functions of the central 
nervous system. 

§ 28. But now, where the signs of mind are definitely 
shown, the accompanying nervous processes are still of 
the same fundamental sort as in the cases just discussed. 
The difference lies in the place, in the complexity, and 
in the significance of the central nervous processes in- 
volved. When, as in our own cases, the cortex of the 
brain is present and is actively functioning, it functions 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 65 

as it does because of the current sense disturbances 
which reach it. The result of the brain process is 
always an outward-flowing, but very highly orderly — a 
serially arranged — collection of disturbances which, 
acting through the cooperation of lower centres, result 
either in actual external movements, or in tendencies to 
movement, or, finally, in the prevention of movements 
which would be carried out, at the time, by the lower 
centres if the latter were not under the control of the 
brain. Intermediate between the ceaseless income of 
the sensory disturbances that reach the cortex so long 
as it is active, and the equally ceaseless outgo of the 
motor processes (or of the processes tending to the con- 
trol of movements), that leave the cortex all through 
our waking life, there are central processes occurring in 
the form of an interchange of induced cellular disturb- 
ances among the elements of which the cortex of the 
brain is composed. As there are some hundreds of 
millions of these elements in the grey matter which 
forms the surface of the brain, and as the intertwining 
fohage of the branching forest of cell processes, together 
with the masses of innumerable winding fibres that 
wander from region to region of the brain, must deter- 
mine an august multiplicity of interrelations among 
these elements, it is no wonder that these central pro- 
cesses should show a simply inexhaustible complexity. 
Still more marvellous, however, from a purely physical 
point of view, is the orderliness which reigns amid the 



66 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

complexity. This orderliness is, in general, due to the 
great law of habit. T/ie braijt tends to do the sort of 
thing that it has already often done. The brain is, 
meanwhile, persistently retentive of its own once-formed 
habits regarding these interchanges of the activities of 
its various elements whenever they are excited in partic- 
ular ways. And it is thus persistent to a degree which 
we can never cease to regard with more wonder the 
more we study the brain's functions. On the other 
hand, the cortex remains, to a remarkably late period 
in life, persistently sensitive to a great variety of new 
impressions, and capable of forming at least a certain 
number of specialised new habits — such as are involved 
whenever we learn to recognise and name a new ac- 
quaintance, or to carry out a new business enterprise. 
And all these things, it must be remembered, the cortex 
accomplishes as a physical mechanism. If we change 
— by experimental interference, by accident, by poison- 
ing, by disease — any of the physical conditions of the 
cortex, we interfere with some or with all of these 
functions. Meanwhile, if we at any time were to cut 
off all sensory stimulations, the brain, as many facts 
indicate, would either soon cease to act at all, or would 
remain active only in a slight or in an almost utterly 
insignificant way. On the other hand, so long as the 
brain is active, it sends out motor stimulations, or 
stimulations that tend to control or to suppress the 
activities guided by lower centres. And it is precisely 



1 



I 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 6/ 

this motor outgo of the brain that determines the very 
signs of mind which we discussed above. 

Furthermore, while the brain is, during waking life, 
full of general activity, it is now well known that every 
definite outflowing process, as well as every defi- 
nite sensory stimulation, involves sharply localised 
regions of the brain. E3^e and ear, arm and leg, have 
definite centres in the brain corresponding to the stimu- 
lation of the sense organ, or to the movements of the 
limb. Each of the numerous habits of the brain means, 
then, tejidencies to the excitement of localised tracts and 
paths tmder given pJiysical conditions. An excitement 
passing over one set of paths leads to one system of 
external movements, e.g. from eye centre to hand 
centre, when one sees and then grasps. If circum- 
stances vary the paths, they vary the motor results. It 
is possible to have, in cases of localised brain disorder, 
the survival of a few very complex habits of movement 
in the midst of the utter wreck of all the other related 
habits of the same grade of complexity and of similar 
significance — as when a patient loses all power to 
remember his native tongue except for a few surviving 
words, chosen by the disease, as it were, either at 
random or in more or less typical fashion, to outlast the 
rest. In this case a few definite and localised habit- 
worn paths for the induction of activity remain after all 
the related paths of the region in question have been 
destroyed. 



68 OUTLINES OF PSYCFIOLOGY 

Meanwhile, what the brain at any moment does, in 
answer to the current sensory stimulations, is deter- 
mined both by its entire past history and by its inherited 
" temperament " or original type of structure. For by 
heredity the brain has come to be just this vast colony 
of functionally united cells. And, on the other hand, 
whatever has happened to the brain in the past has 
meant some definite and usually sharply localised 
interchange of induced activities among its elements. 
Every such interchange has altered the minutest struc- 
ture of all the elements concerned, has established 
localised paths between them for future inductions to 
follow. They can never act again precisely as they 
would have done had they not acted once in just this 
way. And this is what is meant by saying that the 
brain forms its habits. One must now, in addition, 
note that this formation of habits may occur in the most 
subtle fashions. Parts that have often functioned 
together tend to function more easily together again. 
This is true down to the minutest detail of localised 
functions. But what is still more significant for all our 
higher mental life is, that general forms or types of ac- 
tivity, however subtle their nature, zvhen ofice they have 
resulted from a given exchange of induced activities {due 
to sensory stim.ulations), may tend thereby to become 
henceforth more easily reexcited, so that the habits of our 
brain may come to be fixed, not merely as to the mere 
routine which leads to this or to that special act, but as 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 69 

to the general zvays in which acts are done. A given 
** set " of the brain as a whole, that is, a given sort of 
preparedness to be influenced in a certain way — yes, 
even a given tendency to change, under particular con- 
ditions, our more specific fashions of activity — may 
thus become a matter of relatively or of entirely fixed 
habit ; so that, under given conditions, the brain, so long 
as it remains normally intact, is sure to respond to cer- 
tain sensory disturbances by assuming this " cet," by 
being ready for this relatively new influence, or by 
actually seeming to change even its specific past habits 
themselves in a certain general but habitually predeter- 
mined direction, whenever given sorts of stimulation are 
presented. It is known, for instance, that " fickleness " 
of conduct, irrational change of plan of behaviour, can 
itself become a hopelessly fixed habit in a given brain. 
There is, then, no type of activity so general that some 
brain cannot be trained to become habitually and 
fatally predetermined to just that type of interchange 
of internal functions, and so to that type of outward- 
flowing activity. On the other hand, it is indeed true 
that, owing to the localised character of the phenomena 
which determine single habits, the training of one 
specialised cerebral function, in any particular case, 
may not result in the training of some other specialised 
function, even where we, viewing the matter from with- 
out, have supposed that these two functions were very 
intimately connected. The question as to just what 



70 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

effect the training of any one special function will have 
upon other functions, or upon the general tendencies of 
the brain, is therefore always a question to be answered 
by specific experience. This the teacher, in estimating 
the general effects of new educational devices upon the 
pupils, must always remember. 

§ 29. Of the general relation of the activities of the 
cortex to those of the lower nervous centres, and of the 
relations between various activities of the cortex itself, 
it still remains to say here a few words. The brain 
cortex directs, by itself alone, and apart from the co- 
operation of lower nervous centres, no externally 
observable motor processes. What it does is partly to 
combine and elaborate, partly to guide by slight altera- 
tions, and partly to hold back or to inhibit the activi- 
ties which other centres, left to themselves, would carry 
out in response to the sensory stimuli which reach 
them. The brain also arouses the lower centres to 
act in its service by substituting its own stimulations 
for external disturbances. The character of the cortex 
as an organ for preventing or " inhibiting" the functions 
of lower centres is of very great importance, and well 
exemplifies the sort of hierarchy which obtains among 
our nervous centres. Within the brain itself a similar 
hierarchy exists, and a similar system of mutual inhibi- 
tions gets formed on the basis of our experience. 

§ 30. Upon the process of " inhibition," i.e. of 
the prevention or overcoming of one form of nervous. 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 7 1 

excitement through the very fact of the presence of an- 
other, the organisation of all our higher life depends. 
What, in any situation, we a^'e restraitied frojn doing is 
as important to us as what we do. Tension, the mutual 
opposition and balancing of numerous tendencies, is 
absolutely essential to normal life. The brain receives, 
at every waking instant, an enormous overwealth of 
sensory stimulation. For instance, the habits of those 
portions of the brain which receive the fibres of the 
optic nerve, and of those portions which direct our 
eye movements, are such that every object of the least 
.note in our field of vision actually acts as a stimulus to 
incite us to look directly at itself. Consequently, if 
the eyes are idle, the presence of any one bright light 
in the otherwise indifferent field of vision is a physical 
disturbance, to which the natural motor response is the 
turning of the eyes toward that light. And so, if the 
field of vision is full of interesting objects, all of them 
thus tend to excite various motor responses on the part 
of the eyes. In order to look steadily, for even a 
moment, in any one direction, we therefore have to 
inhibit all of these tendencies except the one whose tri- 
umph means seeing the preferred object. This is only 
one among the countless cases where the accomplish- 
ment of a given act means the inhibition of other acts 
to which the brain is meanwhile incited by the presence 
of some habitually effective stimulation. 

As every normal stimulation that reaches our brains 



72 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

during our adult years is likely to appeal more or less 
vigorously to some established brain habit, the need of 
such suppression of possible motor processes is abso- 
lute and continuous. The problem of the inhibition 
of those habits of movement whose presence at any 
given moment would injure the useful adjustment of 
our organisms to their environment is, despite its com- 
plexity, solved, in case of all the higher nervous cen- 
tres by the presence of certain general and very 
characteristic physical processes whose nature is still 
very ill understood, but whose beautiful adaptation 
to their purpose we can already to some extent esti- 
mate. We have before spoken of what may be called 
the general " set," or " sort of preparedness for a given 
kind of excitation," which the brain at any moment 
may be brought to assume. This " set " is in general 
itself the obvious result of a previous series of sensory 
stimulations, and of an appeal to old habits, and it 
may come to pass either suddenly or quite gradually. 
Once assumed, any given " set " of the brain mani- 
fests itself by the fact that, for the time, one group of 
sense experiences tends to arouse the motor habits that 
have become attached to them in consequence of the 
past experiences of the brain, while the motor habits 
to which all other current sense impressions appeal are 
in great measure inhibited. Yet these relatively in- 
effective sense impressions certainly reach, in most 
cases, their centres in the brain ; for, if altered a 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 73 

little from their current character, they may at once 
assert their presence by calling out movements that 
show concern in the alteration. A similar " set " may 
be given by the action of the brain to a group of lower 
centres, which then proceed to react automatically to 
external stimuli until the whole process is cut off by 
external stimuli, or by a new signal from the cortex ; 
and while this "set" continues, all other motor habits 
of the centres in question are inhibited. 

§ 31. Examples, both of inhibition in general and 
of its relation to the passing general " condition of 
preparedness " of the higher and lower centres, are 
easy to give. In general, all higher intellectual pro- 
cesses are accompanied by processes in the cortex 
which appear, when seen from without, enormously 
inhibitory. One absorbed in writing or reading lets 
pass without response countless impressions which 
pretty certainly reach the brain — impressions to which, 
under ordinary circumstances, he would respond by 
acts of looking, of listening, of grasping, or of other 
more or less useful or playful types of adjustment. 
Let him cease the higher activity, and he adjusts him- 
self more vivaciously to the lesser matters of his en- 
vironment. An absorbed public speaker, an actor, or 
a man in a formal social company, inhibits those move- 
ments, however habitual they are in other company, 
and however strong the momentary sensory solicitation 
to them, which his habits have taught him to suppress 



74 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

as being here "out of character." This word "char- 
acter," here names the mental equivalent of a given 
"set" of brain. So long as one assumes the "char- 
acter " the well-practised inhibitions triumph. If one 
goes home, or changes one's company, those former 
inhibitions may vanish as if they never had been, and 
it may be even impossible to reassume them, except in 
particular surroundings. In case of the relations of 
higher and lower centres, the " set " of a group of 
lower nervous processes is well illustrated by the ac- 
tivity of walking, which consists of a regulated series 
of motor adjustments to sensory stimulation, — leg move- 
ments, acts of balancing, etc. This series is largely 
under the control of relatively lower centres, both in 
the cortex and below. It may be initiated by a signal 
from above. Once begun, it is continued with a con- 
sequent inhibition of all inconsistent mifscular move- 
ments, and with little or no guidance from the more 
complex groups of brain centres, until the signal to 
pause is given. Then other activities of adjustment 
take the place of the ones that have come to an end. 
Thus one pauses in a walk through a garden to sur- 
vey more carefully the appearance of the flowers, to 
do a piece of work that requires the skilful use of the 
hands, etc. The rule of inhibition, as regards the 
before-mentioned hierarchy of the nervous centres, 
■seems to be that the higher a given function is, the 7nore 
mitnerous are the inhibitory influences that it exercises 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 75 

over lower centres. Intense brain activity of the high- 
est sort is opposed, while it lasts, to nearly all the sim- 
pler functions above the level of the vital necessities, 
except the very few, such as reading or speaking, which 
training may have brought into the direct service of 
the highest activity itself. Excite a child's brain to 
anything approaching absorbing activity i^e.g. by telling 
the child an interesting story), and for the time you 
"keep him quiet." Otherwise he runs about, looks 
here and there, laughs, wriggles, kicks, prattles — all 
adjustments to his environment, adjustments either use- 
ful or playful, but of a simpler sort. These may cease 
by inhibition when the story begins. The child may 
then sit for a short time with moveless hands, with 
optic axes parallel, i.e. with eyes "gazing far off," 
with legs hanging loosely, with falUng lower jaw — 
all of them more or less inhibitory phenomena. 

§ 32. The practical consequences of this general 
principle of the inhibitory character of the higher 
nervous processes are multitudinous. Absence of in- 
hibitions is a familiar sign of nervous disorder or 
degeneration, and also, in children, of immaturity. 
"Self-control" is an essential part of health. This 
principle furnishes the reason why so much of our 
educational work has to be expended in teaching "self- 
control," whose physical aspect is always the presence 
of inhibitory functions. The moral law has often been 
expressed in the form of the well-known " ThoiL shall 



76 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

not.^^ Such negative precepts always presuppose that 
in the person who really needs to be taught by the 
precept, a disposition or habit of brain preexists which 
involves, when left to itself, a certain sort of response 
to a given environment, e.g. in an extreme case, a 
tendency to the expressive acts called, in human social 
relations, theft or murder. Instead of telling such a 
man what positive motor activity to substitute for such 
doings, the negative precept undertakes to point out 
that, as a condition prior to any better adjusted con- 
duct, these motor tendencies, at least, must be inhib- 
ited. But their inhibition is to be actually brought 
about, in case of the successful moral precept, through 
the influence of what is called in psychological lan- 
guage " suggestion." The physical efficacy of such 
" suggestion " depends, however, upon its appeal to 
brain habits, of a very high level, which, like the 
other higher processes, have a general capacity to 
act in an inhibitory sense, as against functions of 
lower levels or of a more primitive simplicity. 

But just as we often train habits of inhibition as a 
preliminary to the more positive estabhshment of use- 
ful higher functions, it is, even so, true that, whenever 
we can get higher functions of a positive sort estab- 
lished, we thereby train inhibitory tendencies. And, 
on the whole, this is the wiser course for the teacher 
of the growing brain to take, where such a course is 
possible. Inhibition is a constant means, but it is still 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS yj 

but a means to an end. The end is the right sort of 
motor process. Yoii teach a man to control or to re- 
strain himself so soon as you teach him what to do 
in a positive sense. Healthy activity includes self- 
restraint, or inhibition, as one of its elements. You 
in vain teach, then, self-control, itnless you teach much 
more than self-control. The New Testament state- 
ment of " the law and the prophets " substitutes 
"Thou shalt love," etc., for the "Thou shalt not" 
of the Ten Commandments. A brain that is de- 
voted to mere inhibition becomes, in very truth, like 
the brain of a Hindoo ascetic — a mere " parasite " of 
the organism, feeding, as it were, upon all the lower 
inherited or acquired nervous functions of this organ- 
ism by devoting itself to their hindrance. In persons of 
morbidly conscientious life such inhibitory phenomena 
may easily get an inconvenient, and sometimes do get 
a dangerous intensity. The result is then a fearful, 
cowardly, helpless attitude toward life — an attitude 
which defeats its own aim and renders the sufferer not, 
as he intends to be, "good," but a positive nuisance. 

The practical problem as to the degree of inhibition 
which it is well to establish in our nervous life is one 
which wholesome people meet in part by the device of 
a duly changing or alternating activity of the central 
nervous system. The strain of absorbing intellectual 
work is, i7i considerable part, pretty obviously either 
cotiditioned or intensified by two factors .' ( i ) the actual 



78 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

nervous expetidititre involved in the inhibitory processes 
themselves. While one works, countless excitations tend 
to set free lower motor functions, and all these tenden- 
cies have to be held back by counter signals from higher 
nervous stations. This in itself involves a great deal of 
motor expenditure. " To sit still " is itself, in general, 
a motor process, and is often a very hard one, e.g. 
when one is in an exciting or harassing situation, and 
when prudence says, "Do nothing; wait and see." 
(2) The indirect effects of non-exeirise of tJie inhibited 
functions: to sit still and think, to restrain ourselves, 
means to condemn many groups of m.uscles to inac- 
tivity. This means a tendency to disturbed nutritive 
processes, and so in the end an unequal development 
or an actual degeneration of the whole organism. We 
relieve the strain as well as favour the neglected organs 
when we substitute exercise for inhibition. Variation 
of labour is thus, in itself, and within limits, actual 
motor rest or recreation. " To let ourselves go," 
within the bounds of propriety, duty, and modera- 
tion, involves a rest from the heavy motor task of 
"holding ourselves still." This is especially true in 
children, in whom the inhibitory processes are ill- 
formed, and therefore the more laborious. Young 
children should never be asked to continue long any 
one type of inhibitory process. With them any one 
persistent "set" of the brain becomes very soon an 
injurious incident. 



NERVOUS CONDITIONS 79 

On the other hand, not every change of the "set" 
of brain is itself restful. The phenomena of "worry" 
include many "changes of mind," i.e. of more special 
"set" of the brain. Yet the result is disastrous. But 
the effects of worry seem to be very largely due to the 
strong tension existing in the worried person between his 
abnormally numerous sensory incitations to particular 
acts and that general " set" of his brain which, so long 
as he is worried, survives all his actual changes of 
special "set" or plan, and tends to inhibit all sorts 
of definite or connected activity. Whether he rushes 
about or lies still in pretended rest, whether his mood 
is this or that, he is all the while incited to act, and is 
busy holding himself back from effective action. His 
endless question, "What shall I do .-" " his motor rest- 
lessness, his petty and useless little deeds, all express 
his inability to choose between the numerous tenden- 
cies to movement which his situation arouses. Count- 
less motor habits are awakened, and then at once sup- 
pressed. In his despair he tries to inhibit all acts until 
the plan — the saving plan — shall appear. And so, ac- 
complishing nothing, he may do far more motor work 
than an acrobat. But let the dreaded calamity over 
whose mere possibility he worries actually befall him. 
Then, indeed, there is often but one course of conduct, 
perhaps a very simple one, suggested by his new situ- 
ation. The useless inhibitions vanish. One definite 
"set" of brain is, indeed, substituted for the pre- 



80 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ceding state, but the new one is free from the over- 
numerous and violent special tensions between higher 
and lower centres and functions which characterised 
the former. The recently worried man may hereupon 
become cool, may wonder that he can bear the worst so 
much more easily than he could the uncertainty, and 
may by contrast find not only rest, but a kind of joy 
in the relief occasioned by the cessation of useless 
motor processes. Where the man himself has wor- 
ried, it is thus often the part of the seemingly most 
cruel fate to rest him; and this the latter then does 
by cutting off the extra inhibitions in favour of an 
easily accompHshed response to definite stimulations. 
Finally, in this connection, it may be observed that 
when a given series of acts, involving a certain number 
of successive inhibitions, has to be accomplished, much 
more mental strain is involved and more weariness 
results, according as the inhibitions themselves have 
to be made objects of a more definite consciousness 
or volition. And the degree of strain increases very 
rapidly with the attention given to the inhibitory side 
of the process. Hence the hard labour involved in 
learning new adjustments, in acts of voluntary atten- 
tion, and in conscious self-restraint generally. 



CHAPTER IV 

General Features of Conscious Life 

§ 33. A certain proportion of the foregoing func- 
tional processes are attended by mental states. In 
general our mental life, or, as it is often called, our 
consciousness, attends those processes which, while 
involving the cortex, are of a decidedly complex grade 
and of a relatively hesitant character, or which come 
in consequence of the graver interferences on the part 
of our environment. Our most perfect adjustments to 
our environment are accomplished unconsciously, un- 
less we chance to become aware of them through 
their relations to what is actually concerning our con- 
scious life. Our mental Ufe, however, regularly at- 
tends (i) those of our habitual cortical functions which 
are at any time considerably altered to meet novel 
conditions, and which accordingly have, despite their 
skill, a relatively hesitant fallibility about them ; (2) 
those of our functions which are considerably disturbed 
in their normal flow by the intensity or the novelty 
of the external stimulation ; and (3) those of our func- 
tions which, in relation to the other functions present 
G 81 



82 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

in the cortex, have a physical intensity that exceeds 
the average of what is going on at the same time. 
For example, we are conscious when we think out a 
new plan, but we perform numerous acts of mere 
routine without noticing them. What we do very 
rapidly we fail to follow, in its details, with our men- 
tal life. What, as being somewhat novel, we do with 
" deliberation," we may follow very adequately. But 
the physical accompaniments of strong states of feel- 
ing, however swiftly they bring some reaction to pass, 
still imply a change in our consciousness. And in- 
tense experiences, such as disagreeable noises (the 
sound of a hand-organ or of a hurdy-gurdy), may long 
retain a place in consciousness which may be out of 
proportion either to the importance, or to the novelty, 
or to the complexity, or to the deliberateness of the 
motor functions which they arouse. Meanwhile, the 
precise conditions that mark the boundary between 
those functions which have no mental equivalents 
and those to which consciousness corresponds, is un- 
known. What we are sure of is that our consciousness 
is a very inadequate representative of what goes on in 

our cortex. 

f 

§ 34. The mental life which accompanies these 
functions consists of a " stream of consciousness " in 
which we can generally distinguish many " states " or 
different " contents " of consciousness. The " stream 
of consciousness " is the name frequently applied to 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 83 

what passes in our mental life, because, mentally speak- 
ing, we live in a state of constant inner change, so 
that no portion of our consciousness ever remains 
long without some alteration, while most of our con- 
tents are always changing pretty rapidly. On the 
other hand, the changes in our inner state are, in 
general, however swift they may be, still somewhat 
gradual when compared with the swifter physical 
changes known to us. A flash of lightning lasts 
very much longer for our sight than it does as a 
fact in the physical world. This is partly due to the 
"inertia" of the retina of the eye. But a similar 
" inertia " holds of all our central processes. Every 
mental experience always joins on, more or less, to 
subsequent experiences, and in general to previous 
experiences also. A new experience gradually wins 
our attention, reaches its height, and dies away as 
our attention is turned to the next ; and even in very 
sudden experiences this relatively gradual character 
of the process can be noted, if not at the beginning 
then at the end of the experience, as it slips away 
into a mere memory. If one listens to any simple 
rhythm, such as the ticking of a watch, one can note 
how the succession of separate ticks is viewed by 
our consciousness in such a way that the successive 
beats do not stand as merely separate facts, but are 
always elements in the whole experienced rhythm to 
which they seem to belong, while the successive pres- 



84 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

entations of the rhythm form a sort of stream of 
events, each one of which gradually dies out of mind 
as the new event enters. In consciousness there is 
no such thing as an indivisible present moment. What 
happens in our minds during any one thousandth of 
a second of even the busiest inner life none of us can 
possibly make out. The contents of mind, as we know 
them in the " psychological present," constitute at the 
very least a considerable and flowing series of changes, 
the least appreciable portion of which takes up a con- 
siderable fraction of a second. 

As for these " contents " themselves of the stream of 
consciousness, it is well to say at once that they never 
form any mere collection of " ideas " or of other simple 
and divided states. Consciousness is not a shower of 
shot, but a stream with distinguishable ideas or other 
such clearer mental contents floating on its surface. 
What we find in any passing moment is a little portion 
of the "stream," a "pulse," or "wave" of mental 
change, some of whose contents may be pretty sharply 
distinguished, by what is called our attention, from the 
rest, while the body of the stream consists of contents 
that can no longer be sharply sundered from one 
another. If one listens to music, the notes or the 
chords may, in their series as they pass, appear as 
sharply separable contents. But these stand out, or 
float, upon a stream of mental life which includes one's 
estimate of the time sequence of the music as a whole, 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 85 

one's pleasure in hearing the music, one's train of 
associated memories, one's general sense of the current 
bodily comfort and discomfort, and much more of the 
sort, which no man can analyse into any collection of 
separate or even separable states. In consequence, we 
are never able, by any device at our disposal, to tell 
with certainty the whole of what is, or just was, present 
to any one moment of our conscious life. The old 
question whether one can have " more than one idea at 
a time " present to one's mind is a question absurdly 
put. Present at any one time to one's mind is a small 
portion of the flowing stream of mental contents, in 
which one can in general distinguish at least two, and 
sometimes more, elements of content (perceptions, feel- 
ings, images, ideas, words, impulses, motives, hopes, 
intentions, or the like), while beside and beneath what 
one can distinguish there is the body of the stream or 
(to change the metaphor) the background of conscious- 
ness, where one can no longer distinguish anything in 
detail, although in some other moment one may easily 
note how the v/hole background has changed. 

§ 35. In this general characterisation of the "stream 
of consciousness " we have already by implication 
answered certain questions that are of fundamental 
importance for psychological theory. Plainly the con- 
scious state of any moment involves two characteristic 
features, the so-called " Unity of Consciousness," as it 
is exemplified at that precise moment, and the equally 



86 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

obvious presence of a Variety of mental states, which 
have to one another relations of similarity and of dif- 
ference. By the phrase "unity of consciousness" we 
mean the fact that, at any time, whatever is present 
tends to form an always incomplete but still, in some re- 
spects, single conscious condition. If you look at your 
open hand you see at once more than one finger. On 
this page you see at OTice more than one printed letter. 
If you look at a person who is speaking to you, you at 
once see him and hear him. If bad news disturbs your 
mind, you are at once conscious of certain ideas which 
the bad news arouses, and of the distress which this 
news occasions. In all these cases, the phrase " at 
once " stands for the fact that we more technically 
characterise as the present unity of consciousness. The 
facts present to mind are not merely various, they occur 
together. In what way they occur together, in what sense 
we are "at once" aware of them, every person must 
observe for himself. The unity of consciousness is 
directly accessible only to its own single observer. 
Nobody else can directly verify the fact that such unity 
exists. But the agreement in the various reports given 
of this unity by many observers constitutes the objective 
evidence upon which the psychologist depends when 
he makes his assertion. The phrase " at once " is of 
common occurrence, even in popular language, as a 
means of characterising the unity of conscious states. 
When more careful examination is made for psychologi- 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 87 

cal purposes the character of this unity becomes more 
precisely definable, yet, after having made proper 
provisions for securing exact observation, every one 
must judge for himself the aptness of any characterisa- 
tion which may be offered in the effort to express the 
nature of the unity of consciousness. 

This fact of the unity of every conscious state is 
one for which there is no precise parallel in the 
physical world, as we are ordinarily accustomed to 
conceive that world. There are many senses in which 
various phenomena of nature, occurring outside of 
our minds, may be regarded as forming a unity. 
Thus we speak of one forest, of one range of moun- 
tains, or of one ocean. In a similar way each thing 
in the physical world is regarded as in some sense 
a unity of many properties and states. Yet, in all 
such cases, the sense in which we speak of the 
physical object as one or as many seems somewhat 
arbitrary ; and changes with our own point of view 
as external observers of the facts. We sometimes say 
that the word " forest " is merely a collective name 
for the many trees, or even that the term " thing " 
stands for a collection of physical facts and processes 
which our subjective interests unify, but which " in 
themselves " are so many distinct facts. But the 
unity of consciousness is a fact constantly forced 
upon us whatever our point of view. For no one can 
observe a utental variety of inner states without finding 



88 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

these states together in his one inclusive condition of , 
mind. " 

The unity of consciousness is sometimes compared 
to that of a living organism. Just as the various 
functions and organs of a living body constitute in 
some sense a single whole, so, as one often says, the 
various states present at once to mind have an 
organic unity. Yet the comparison is not altogether 
satisfactory. For the considerations that lead us to 
regard a living organism as a unity of many organs 
and functions are decidedly complicated, and are pre- 
sented to us indirectly, so that we often have to 
think, with considerable doubt, whether or no we 
shall call some large organism a single individual, 
or a colony of many individuals. But the unity of 
consciousness we have always with us, not because 
we think out some reason why consciousness must 
be one, but because all that happens at any moment 
within our minds constitutes for us a single event, 
however complex this event may be. Furthermore, 
the reasons that lead us to call an organism one de- 
pend wholly upon cooperation and mutual support of 
various organic processes. But the unity of con- 
sciousness exists in some degree, however distracted 
our inner state may be, and however much the 
various tendencies present may seem to disturb or to 
oppose one another. Thus, if an intolerable discord 
breaks into the midst of a musical harmony (as when. 



GENERAL- FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 89 

while some one is playing beautiful music, a hand- 
organ begins outside, or the scraping of a file upon 
metal is heard), these various mental presentations 
seem not mutually to support one another in any 
organic way ; yet, so far as they are present at once, 
there is still a unity of consciousness, however dis- 
tracted and incomplete this unity may appear. 

§ 36. On the other hand, the fact of the Variety 
present to consciousness at any moment is equally 
obvious. The one conscious state of the moment is 
always a unity consisting of a fmdtiplicity. The 
relation between these two aspects of the present 
consciousness is best observable in cases where the 
unity and the multiplicity involve a certain harmoni- 
ous effect. This occurs when we listen to music, and 
are aware at once of several harmoniously related 
facts, such as tone, harmony, and rhythm. It occurs 
also when we enjoy decorative art, and are aware 
of a complex of lines, of forms, and of colours, com- 
posing a pleasing totality. Yet, as already pointed 
out, disharmonious and distracting conscious states 
contain the contrasting aspects of unity and variety, 
in so far as the most painful and distressing com- 
plications of the moment are experienced at once. 
There are some cases where the unity of the con- 
scious state seems to be predominant, and where the 
element of variety tends to lapse. Such states occur 
on the borderland of sleep, or in conditions where 



90 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

for any reason we become aware rather of the total 
impression of the instant, rather than of the variety 
of experiences that occur within this instant. Yet 
the variety never wholly disappears, unless conscious- 
ness itself disappears. When the last differences lapse, 
then we become insensible. When we are aware only 
of unity, it appears that we then become aware of 
nothing at all. 

§ 37. As the last statement made indicates, the 
variety present at any one instant of consciousness 
is a variety of different elements. To say this is to 
utter in one sense the barest of commonplaces. Yet, 
in another sense, the statement becomes important, 
because it attracts attention to the two most funda- 
mental relations which can exist amongst the various 
states that are present in consciousness. These rela- 
tions are: (i) difference, and (2) similarity or partial 
sameness. Whatever these various states are, they 
are known as different fro7n one another. The kind 
of difference that they possess may itself vary end- 
lessly. Colours and shades differ from one another in 
the field of our visual experiences. Colours differ from 
odours, as we observe when we look at a flower and 
smell it. Mental states due to the direct disturbance 
of our organs of sense differ from images that we 
can observe in the absence of objects. Thoughts 
differ from one another, and from feelings or from 
decisions. And so on indefinitely. All variety of 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 91 

which we are to be conscious involves difference. 
And the experience of difference is amongst the most 
fundamental of the facts of mental life. 

Yet difference itself is never found as a relation 
between two facts without there being present an- 
other relation which is of equally fundamental impor- 
tance. When we observe that one fact differs from 
another, we also are able to observe that these tzvo 
facts have, as we say, something in common, or are 
similar to one another. Colours differ from odours. 
But both the colour and the odour of a rose have in 
common the features that enable a psychologist to 
recognise that they are both sensations. The mental 
image that I can form of my friend's face when he 
is absent, differs from the mental image that I can 
form of the sound made by a violin, which I have 
heard somebody play. Yet if I have both images 
present to my mind at once, I can observe that they 
have in common something which makes me call 
them both images. Thus, sameness and difference are 
inseparable characters. Not only is this the case in 
the most general sense, but in special instances my 
consciousness of the similarity of two objects that are 
present to my mind helps me to become aware of 
their differences, and vice versa ; so that the con- 
sciousness of similarity and the consciousness of 
difference are, in certain cases at least, mutually sup- 
porting facts so that to become aware of one of 



92 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

these relations helps me to become aware of the 
other. Thus I can readily observe the difference 
between right and left as directions, because I am 
aware of their similarity as being both of them direc- 
tions within the one space world of which at any 
moment I seem to be conscious. The relation of 
similarity between the successive chords and phrases 
of a musical composition helps me to become aware 
of the differences present in the musical experience. 
In the effects of decorative art the similarities 
present, for example, the symmetries, help me to 
appreciate more definitely and pleasantly those dif- 
ferences of experience upon which the decorative 
effect depends. On the other hand, in so far as 
a consciousness of difference seems to be present 
without much consciousness of similarity, this con- 
sciousness of difference itself acquires a charac- 
teristically baffling and puzzling effect, so that I 
am likely to say, in such cases, that I am aware 
of the difference, but am not aware wherein the 
difference lies. Thus, a sudden shock, such as a 
thunder clap, an explosion, or the experience of the 
discharge of a Leyden jar through one's organism, 
may give one a vague consciousness of difference, 
whose intensity still does not insure any clear con- 
sciousness of what the difference is, until, at the 
moment when we recognise the nature of the shock, 
we come to possess certain conscious states that are 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 93 

not only different from, but observably similar to, 
other states. 

Thus the unity of present consciousness is indeed 
diversified by differences. But these differences are 
never without greater or less similarities amongst the 
different states. Where the similarities and differences 
support one another, so that we become aware of each 
by means of the other, and so that each makes the 
other precise, as is the case when we observe the 
object of decorative art, or the musical phrase, then 
onr consciousness acquires a character called Clear- 
ness, — a character which must, once more, be experi- 
enced in order to be appreciated. In this sense, for 
instance, an object upon which our eyes are focussed 
is seen clearly ; or a series of sounds that are not 
too confusingly mixed with other sounds are heard 
clearly. And it is in this sense that the beauty of 
the object of art is clearly observable. 

It is worth while also to notice that the Unity and 
the Variety of consciousness, at any moment, stand 
in a relation to one another that may be also called 
a relation of similarity and difference. For the unity 
of this present instant of consciousness is itself differ- 
ent from the variety of this instant. And on the 
other hand, the unity and variety are similar to one 
another, in so far as they characterise the same in- 
stant of consciousness. Meanwhile, in so far as the 
relation of sameness and the relation of difference 



94 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

are considered in themselves, it appears that the 
sameness, or the similarity, of the various conscious 
states present at any one moment, seems to bring 
these states rather into relation to the unity of 
consciousness, while the differences amongst the states 
seem rather to relate them to the aspect of variety. 

§ 38. The extremely elementary but often neg- 
lected facts about the unity of consciousness which 
have thus been enumerated have, even when taken by 
themselves, a very important practical application. If 
it is our ptirpose to make any one, as for instance a 
pupil, clearly conscious of some kind of difference be- 
tween facts, we carefully choose facts that, while simi- 
lar to one another in as many other ways as possible, 
clearly m,anif est just this particular difference. On the 
other hand, if we wish to make one observe a similar- 
ity, as happens wheit we desire to illustrate a law or a 
type or a class of facts, zve carefully present different 
instances of this same type ; that is, zve illustrate same- 
ness throtigh difference, and difference throu-gh same- 
ness. And in both cases zve tend to succeed in proportion 
as we bring the differences and the samenesses that are 
to be studied into some single tmity of consciousness, 
by presenting various objects at once. If this simple 
rule is neglected, if for instance one merely presents 
objects with a view to their arousing the effect of 
difference, as when one tries merely to surprise a 
pupil by the shock of startling varieties, one produces 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 95 

indeed a vague consciousness of differences, and a 
consciousness that, even in the worst case, is sure to 
be attended with some consciousness of similarity. But 
this consciousness remains uninstructive, because the 
similarities and differences presented are not so arranged 
as to support one another. If on the other hand, 
for the sake of making one aware of certain similar- 
ities we present him a true monotonous series of 
objects in which no difference can be detected, or at 
least no interesting difference, we tend to reduce the 
pupil's consciousness to the lowest level. And 
in so far we fail to instruct him. The rule for arous- 
ing the kind of consciousness to which the teacher 
appeals is similar to the rules followed in the decora- 
tive arts or in music : present similarities and differ- 
ences together in such fashion that each shall support 
the other. Or, expressing the rule with reference to 
the unity of consciousness : aim to secure the most 
complete unity of consciousness that is consistent with a 
desired degree of variety of experience, and vice versa. 
§ 39. But we now come to another aspect of the 
unity of consciousness, and to one which the fore- 
going account of the " stream of consciousness " has 
inevitably mentioned. We have here to call special 
attention to it afresh. TJie term "at once,'' used with 
reference to the unity of consciousness, is inevitably 
ambiguous. We always appreciate at once a variety 
of coexisting or of contemporaneous conscious facts. 



96 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

We also experience " at once^' but in another sense of 
the term " at once," a brief series of successive conscious 
states. As above stated, our consciousness knows noth- 
ing directly of an indivisible present moment, such as 
physical and mathematical theories assume to occur in 
time. We are aware at once of more than one succes- 
sive tone or chord in a musical sequence, of more than 
one stage or state of our own action, when we are per- 
forming some rapid series of deeds. What the German 
psychologist, Wilhelm Stern, has called the " psychical 
present moment," what Professor James has called "the 
specious present " (herein following the usage of sev- 
eral recent English writers), is no infinitesimal instant 
of time, but always has an appreciable length, somewhat 
more than the tenth of a second, and apparently not 
longer than two or three seconds. The length of this 
" specious present " probably varies with decidedly com- 
plex conditions. It seems to be longest when we are 
following the succession of a decidedly regular rhythmic 
process, which is presented to our consciousness with 
the most favourable degree of complexity of structure. 
It seems to be shortest when the sequence of conscious 
facts contains a rapid series of distracting differences, 
whose similarities we fail clearly to grasp. What occurs 
within this psychical present moment is known to us in 
some sense as one, but nevertheless as a sequence, which 
contains within it successive various states, of which 
some are observed to precede, while others follow. 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 97 

Every consciousness of change depends ^lpon our power 
thus to observe "at once'' a considerable^ although also, 
from a larger point of view, brief sequence of mental 
states. Now it is in following such a sequence of states 
that we tend to become especially and most clearly- 
aware of the differences which are there present. The 
perception of sequence aids us in the perception of differ- 
ence. If two experiences are in any sense coexistent, 
that is, if their causes are presented to me at the same 
time, I may fail to notice the difference between them. 
But if they follow one after another, I shall be much 
more likely to note the fact that they are different, in 
case the succession is immediate, and without any in- 
terval between. Hence, our discriminations, in a great 
number of cases, occur in a succession of acts. This fact 
has great and obvious practical importance ; and it 
partly explains why stories interest us more than 
mere descriptions, for the former constantly remind us 
of interesting sequences. 

§ 40. The foregoing considerations have now pre- 
pared us to face a problem upon which modern psy- 
chological writers naturally lay great stress. This is 
the problem : of what elements does our mental life 
consist } and in what sense does it consist of elements 
at all.!" 'The example set by the physical sciences 
naturally makes many psychologists interested in re- 
ducing mental Hfe, at the outset of the inquiry, to its 
simplest elements, just as the physicist and the chemist 



98 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

reduce complex bodies, first to the relatively simple 
aggregates (such as solids, liquids, gases), or, in chemis- 
try, to the chemical elements whereof they are com- 
posed, and then to the hypothetical molecules or atoms 
whereof these elements are constituted. Such analysis 
having proved so useful in the case of physical phe- 
nomena, the question arises whether the psychologist 
has a right to use this method. As a fact, this method 
has been very greatly used in modern psychology, and 
with very important results. An indication of the na- 
ture both of the processes used and of the results 
reached, is necessary in order that we should be able 
to estimate the theoretical and practical value of every 
such procedure. 

When we look at an object, such as a rose, when we 
touch it, and inhale its odour, we plainly have a complex 
mental state ; that is, there is a variety within the 
unity of our consciousness. Now of what elements 
does this variety consist ? It is not difficult for even an 
untrained introspection to detect the fact that our total 
impression of the rose which is present to us is made 
up of the conscious seeing of colours, of the conscious 
smelling of odours, and of the equally conscious impres- 
sions of the sense of touch. Since these various kinds 
of conscious states are obviously due to the external 
disturbance of our sense organs, the name "sensation " 
readily suggests itself for them. In addition to these 
sensations we have also a feeling of pleasure in the 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 99 

rose. In addition, the rose arouses in us a conscious- 
ness of its name, and gives us various other mental 
states of the type usually called "ideas" or "images." 
Our consciousness of the rose thus appears to be a 
unity of all these elements. But a further analysis 
seems to show that all of these states are themselves 
enormously complex. What we call the colour of a rose 
is an experience made up of varieties that a closer 
analysis soon begins to detect, since the various parts 
of the rose do not give us exactly the same kind of 
visual impression. If we pursue still farther such an 
analysis, by appealing to what can be discovered more 
or less indirectly, and experimentally regarding the rela- 
tion of our organ of vision to the rose that we see, we 
seem able to discover that various portions of the retina 
of the eye are receiving sensory impressions, any one of 
which, if it were alone, would produce in our conscious- 
ness a particular sensation of colour, which we should 
then localise at some one point of the visual field. It 
appears hereupon natural to say that our total impres- 
sion of the colour of the rose is a mental cotnplex of many 
different sensations, no one of which we do experience 
alone, but every one of which must be present as a con- 
stituent of our total mental state. 

But now we indeed cannot by direct analysis discover, 
in our total impression of the rose at the moment when 
its colour and odour impress us, of precisely what ultimate 
elementary sensations all the impression is composed. 

■ L.oFC. 



100 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

For only indirectly, by experimental devices, can we 
isolate one or another of the simplest sensations which 
any one smallest sensible portion of the object, that is 
of the rose, would give us, if that portion did alone act 
upon our sense organs. There results the theory that 
our total mental state is not only a unity consisting of 
various conscious facts which we ourselves can by more 
or less effort directly observe within this unity, but is 
also a unity consisting of certain ultitnate sensations 
and feelings that we cannot ourselves detect except in- 
directly^ through experiments which isolate such elements, 
and which bring them before us in moments of con- 
sciousness when the original total impression is absent. 
Hereupon we may be led to declare that these now 
isolated elements somehow blended to form the total 
impression that then we had. 

§ 41. Generalising somewhat from such instances as 
the ones just used, we can state in more universal terms 
the theory of the constitution of our mental life which is 
just suggested as follows : At any moment we have 
a total mental state possessing the characteristic unity 
of consciousness. This state we may call T. T con- 
sists, as we have already said, of a variety of mental 
life which we can by direct analysis very readily 
detect as present in the total condition. Let us call 
the elements directly observable in this variety, a, b, 
c, d. But now, according to the present theory, each 
one of these relatively simple mental processes, a, b, 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE lOI 

c, d, is, as a fact, enormously complex. Thus a, let 
us say, is a totality of the sort such as our visual image 
of the rose when we remember it, or our visual per- 
ception of the rose when we see it, exemplifies. But 
a is due to an excitation, of sense organs, and of brain 
tracts, or of brain tracts alone, or at least accompanies 
such excitation. Let the brain centres, excited when a 
comes to consciousness, be denominated by i, 2, 3, 
etc. Through experiments of the nature of those 
already indicated we can in many cases produce an 
excitation of some brain centre in relative isolation. In 
such cases we may discover that this excitation is 
accompanied with a conscious process s, which we shall 
suppose to be a conscious process due to as simple a 
brain process as we can hope to excite in any relatively 
isolated way. A similarly isolated excitement of the 
brain process which we have called 2 would produce 
another conscious process, which we may call s\ 
The conscious states s and s^ may be such that tvheji 
we have observed them in isolation, we can detect an 
aspect of the original process T, namety, of our whole 
mental state, which we may regard as " due " to them, 
or to either one of them. We may proceed in a similar 
fashion to isolate conscious elements that correspond 
to those other processes in the brain, which form parts 
of the original total brain processes. Isolations of this 
kind we can carry out with especial success in cases 
where we are dealinor with conscious states due to the 



102 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

excitement of sense organs. With somewhat greater 
difficulty we can approach such isolations of portions 
of the total brain processes in other instances also, 
namely, in case of brain processes that have to do with 
our images of absent objects, and also in some other 
instances. Where such processes of isolation cannot 
be actually accomplished, we can conceive them 
possible. 

Since every complex brain disturbance thus consists 
of processes that could be excited in relative isolation, 
and since each one of these processes may be con- 
ceived as attended, when this process is excited alone, 
by some conscious process of a simple nature, and of 
the type of s, in the instance just mentioned, we are, 
according to the present theory, justified in asserting 
that the original mental state T consists of elements 
s, s', and many other such elements, of which it is said 
to be made up. These elements may escape in any 
single instance our direct analysis. But we may con- 
ceive them capable of isolation by some such process 
as that which has just been in general formulated. If 
we conceive each one of these elements of the type of 
s so simple that no further analysis of this element 
will be possible, we may call s, for the purposes of 
psychology, an absolutely elementary mental state. 
The theory here in question declares that all conscious- 
ness is made up of such elementary states. They are 
said to " blend " together, or to come into some sort of 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 103 

" union," in order to form our total conscious state at 
any moment. The task of psychology is declared to 
include an exhaustive catalogue of these elementary 
mental states, and then a further examination of the 
laws according to which they blend, or otherwise 
unite, to form the more massive states of consciousness 
which we directly observe to be present at any moment. 
The parallel of such an analysis to the atomic theory, 
as the latter has been so successfully developed in mod- 
ern physical and chemical science, is obvious. 

§ 42. But the present theory lays claim to a basis 
in experience which has been frequently denied to the 
atomic theory, as the latter exists in chemistry. For, 
as a general rule, the mental elements of which the 
modern psychologists make use are themselves facts 
which are capable of being observed in greater or less 
isolation by experimental devices, although we may fail 
to detect these elements in the conscious state in which 
they are said to enter, so long as we merely look to the 
sort of analysis which we can ordinarily make of con- 
sciousness at any one instant. It is psychological ex- 
periment that enables us to get elements in relative 
isolation, and also to show that they correspond to 
disturbances of sense organs, and to resulting excita- 
tions of brain, which we can prove to be part of the 
physical accompaniment of those conscious processes 
into which these elements are said to enter. Further- 
more, when the elements have once been isolated by 



104 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

experimental devices, it very generally proves to be 
possible to detect their presence within conscious states 
closely similar to the very ones in which it was at first 
impossible to find them. At all events, it is possible by 
analysis to find, in our total conscious state, at least 
traces of something similar to the isolated elements, 
when once we have observed the latter. It is true that, 
even then, the conscious processes in which we find 
traces of the elements that we have once learned to 
analyse, through the experimental devices that have 
given us these elements in isolation, are processes 
which occur after our experiments have been made ; 
and are therefore no longer identical with those states 
of our nai've and untrained consciousness in which we 
could not as yet discover any trace of these elements 
by any effort then possible to us. Nevertheless, the 
theory here in question supposes that all our conscious 
processes, eve^i the ones whose elements we have never 
learned to observe in isolation, are actually composed 
of such elements. And because of the experimental 
results whose nature has been in general indicated, 
this view is commonly advanced as a strictly empirical 
conclusion. 

§ 43. A few further examples are still necessary to 
illustrate the way in which such a conclusion comes to 
appear to many so convincing. When the unmusical 
person hears a musical chord, or listens to a complex 
harmony, he is unable, in general, to give any com- 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 1 05 

plete account of the elementary tones of which the 
harmonious sounds consist. He is indeed aware of a 
certain richness in the whole experience, which would 
enable him to say that he is listening to something 
complex. In the case of the harmony due to various 
instruments or voices, he is more or less able to distin- 
guish, as he listens, what belongs to each instrument or 
voice, unless indeed the voices and instruments are 
numerous, when once more he quickly loses his power 
to analyse. The musician, accustomed to hear voices, 
instruments, and single tones, in isolation, as well as in 
harmonious union, analyses at pleasure the harmonious 
effect, and knows that the sound consists of a certain 
collection of tones, which even while they blend, consti- 
tute for him still a distinguishable collection. But physi- 
cal and psychological experiments go still further in 
the analysis of tones than the ordinary musical con- 
sciousness goes. The physical disturbance produced by 
striking a single key on the piano is a highly complex, 
but analysable, system of sound waves. It is discovered 
that the more elementary constituents of which this sys- 
tem of vibrations consists can be experimentally isolated. 
In this case, such more elementary constituents of the 
total physical process, when they are isolated, produce 
certain sensations, namely, the " partial tones," of which 
the original tone is consequently said to consist. When 
once the ear has been trained, by listening to the partial 
tones in isolation, it then becomes possible for con- 



I06 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sciousness to discover, by analysis, the presence of these 
partial tones in what at first appeared to be the single 
tone of the piano. /;/ consequence the theory seems 
warranted that the original tone, viewed as a conscious 
state, was not simple, but was a blending of various 
elementary states, corresponding to the so-called funda- 
mental tone which determines the pitch of the note 
that the untrained ear hears, and to the various " partial 
tones," which sound along with the fundamental tone, 
and which constitute part of the total physical process 
upon which our original hearing of the tone depends. 
// seems, at first sight, that we here have an empirical 
proof of how a m,ental state which seems to the tmtrained 
consciousness simple, actually consists of many mental 
elem.ents. .« 

In a very different field we meet with a correspond- 
ing analysis of a complex mental state, in case of what 
has been called the " feeling of effort," which we 
observe when we make a movement requiring a consid- 
erable exertion of energy. Our ordinary consciousness 
does indeed indicate that this " feeling of effort " is 
a complicated state. But processes of isolation of the 
kind already illustrated gradually bring us to observe 
that such a " feeling of effort " is a complex state 
possessing a decidedly discoverable constitution, and 
due to various sensory disturbances produced by the 
contraction of our muscles, by the rubbing of our joint 
surfaces together, by stretching and pressure, occurring 



i 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 107 

in skin, tendons, etc., or finally to mental images sug- 
gested to us by the results of former sensory expe- 
riences of just this kind. The " feeling of effort " is 
consequently said by the present theory to consist of 
mental elements corresponding to these various elementary 
excitations. 

§ 44. So much must suffice as a general indication 
of the theory of the structure of consciousness here in 
question. No one can doubt the importance of the ex- 
perimental evidence upon which it is based. And no 
one can doubt that this importance is partly a matter 
of psychological concern. We do gain a great deal 
for the understanding of our conscious processes when 
we discover that they accompany physical processes 
whose complex structure can be studied, and whose 
more elementary constituents can be analysed. We 
gain also when we learn that these more elementary 
physical processes can be found to be accompanied, 
when once they are isolated, by certain simpler mental 
states. We also advance in insight when we learn 
that, when once our powers of analysis have been 
trained, we can detect the traces of such simpler 
states in the massive states of consciousness with 
which we began, although these massive states at 
first seemed to defy any minute analysis. On the 
other hand, it may well be questioned whether these 
results of experience are rightly interpreted by the 
theory that we have just been summarising. Con- 



I08 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sciousness, as we have already said, is not a shower 
of shot. It does not come to us as consisting of these 
elementary states. When what is called the " analy- 
sis " of the original unity of consciousness takes place 
through these devices of isolation, and through a com- 
parison of the results of isolation with the complex 
mental states that we produce after studying the iso- 
lated elements, for the sake of verifying the results 
of our "analysis," then what is "analysed" is not the 
original naive consciousness, zvhich was whatever it was 
found to be at the time when it occurred. On the con- 
trary, what we "analyse " is a new sort of consciousness 
that takes the place of our original and naive con- 
sciousness — a more sophisticated consciousness, so to 
speak. Now the psychologist is indeed equally inter- 
ested both in nal've and in sophisticated conscious- 
ness. But whatever the relations between the two 
may be, he is not justified in asserting of the naive 
consciousness that it already possesses the structure 
which experimentally trained analysis can learn to find 
in the more sophisticated consciousness. 

Whoever hears the chord and does not analyse it, 
has heard a certain whole in which he simply did not 
detect parts such as the later analysis detects in the 
chords that it examines. Now a state of conscious- 
ness exists when somebody is conscious of that state. 
When nobody is conscious of that state, it does not 
exist. When the musician observes the chord to be 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE 1 09 

an unity wherein he finds an actually conscious and 
analysed variety, he finds what he finds. But what 
he finds is simply not present in the consciousness of 
the unmusical listener. The elements that analysis de- 
tects exist, as conscious states, when they are detected 
and not before. Not only is this true of the elements 
that can be isolated only by careful experiment or by 
means of technical training. It holds also of those 
elements which we can either find or not in a given 
present conscious state, according as we do or do not 
choose to attend to them. As has been said, we 
always observe in any conscious state unity and mul- 
tiplicity. But the conscious state contains exactly 
such multiplicity as we do observe. The 'multiplicity 
that we might observe, and do not obsei've, belongs to 
a possible mental state wJiich, at the moment of our 
failure to observe, zve do not possess. 

It now seems to us, therefore, wrong to say that a 
mental state consists at any time of elements which 
we ourselves do not distinguish in that state. When 
we assert that these elements are nevertheless there, 
although they are not distinguished, we are consider- 
ing not the mental state itself, but either what we 
know about the complex external physical object of 
which we suppose this mental state to be the sign ; 
or else what we know about the state of the brain ; 
or again what we know about the meaning of this 
mental state, when the latter is regarded as a stage 



no OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

in a logically or morally significant process ; or else, 
finally, we are referring to a more sophisticated state 
of mind which the psychologist, by his devices for 
analysis, has substituted for the original and naifve 
consciousness. The physical world contains countless 
aspects that at any moment we might observe, but do 
not. If this physical world is viewed as the object of 
which at any moment our consciousness is showing 
us some aspect, we can indeed quite correctly say that 
our consciousness fails to observe the elements of which 
its physical object all the time consists. In a similar 
fashion, a complex brain process consists of elemen- 
tary processes. And just so every state of conscious- 
ness that we have is also a stage in a mental process 
that in the whole of our lives has a very rich mean- 
ing. Of this meaning we may become conscious | 
afresh from various and countless points of view. , 
We may accordingly quite rightly say that any con- 
scious state means a great deal of which we are justj 
then not conscious. If, by analysis, we can detect 
something of this meaning, we can then say that what J 
our analysis discovers was present, as a meaning, inj 
the state that we did not analyse. But the concept! 
of the psychological element, present when it is notj 
observed, but constitutive, along with other elements,] 
of the mental state in which it was not observed, is 3.1 
conception neither of a physical fact nor of a moral| 
or logical or aesthetic meaning. Such elements ard| 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE m 

found only in those states of mind which result from 
habits of analysis. 

If the musician says to the unmusical man, " You 
heard the chord ; and, as a fact of your consciousness 
that chord was composed of these tones ; yet of these 
tones you were not conscious," we can understand what 
the musician means if he intends to say something 
about the physical constitution of the sound-vibra- 
tion. We also can easily understand him if he means 
to say something about the constitution of the process 
in the sense organ or in the brain centres of the one 
who heard the tone. And we can well understand 
his meaning if he intends to say something about 
the musically valuable fact, if for instance he implies 
something of this sort " the aesthetic reason why that 
chord was so rich to you or so beautiful depended 
upon the fact that it had this constitution." In this 
last case the musician may be analysing not so much 
the physical or the neurological complexity of the 
processes concerned, as the meaning which the whole 
state had for the one who admired the chord, but 
who did not analyse it. But if the musician persists 
in saying "the chord as a conscious fact consisted 
for you of mental states corresponding to its various 
constituent tones, but you are not aware of these 
mental states, because they blended into the one total 
impression," then indeed the musician seems to be 
asserting the existence of a mental state which was not 



112 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the mental state of anybody — not of the musician, 
since he analyses the chord, nor of the unmusical 
man, since the supposed element finds no place in 
his consciousness that he himself, for whom alone 
his mental facts can exist, is capable of observing. 

§ 45. But what from this point of view, as one may 
insist, becomes of the vast body of empirical evidence 
whose existence we before admitted ? We answer (as 
the just cited case of the musical and the unmusical 
experience indicates) : All this evidence exists indeed, 
but it does not prove that our consciousness consists of 
any other elements than of those which we at any time 
observe as the variety present within its unity. Our 
consciousness is what we find it to be. What the 
psychologists can tell us about it must consist, first, of 
a more careful restatement and generalisation of the 
characters that, upon various occasions, various human 
beings actually find there. It is the business of the 
psychologists to note what the ordinary consciousness 
forgets, namely, the various observations which we can 
from time to time make, or do from time to time make, 
upon the contents of consciousness. And now, second, 
it is the business of the psychologists to discover what 
ordinary observation altogether ignores, or at best only 
fragmentarily notices, namely, the sequence and. con- 
nection of our successive mental states. And, third, it 
is indeed a very important part of the psychologists' 
task to discover the laws that govern these sequences, 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE II3 

and their relation to their physical accompaniments and 
conditions. It is especially in connection with this last 
great task of the psychologists that the experimental 
facts, which are usually supposed to prove the ex- 
istence of mental elements, find their true place and 
significance. 

What these empirical evidences do show is firsty the 
relation of our conscious states to their physical accom- 
paniments and conditions. One of the most important 
of these relations is statable in the following terms : 
when we have a conscious state zvhich as a fact we do 
not analyse or discover to be various in its constittition 
beyond a certain point, this mental state is in general 
dependent iipon very complex physical conditions. These 
physical conditions are in large measure due to stimu- 
lations of our sense organs. They are also in large 
measure due to such central brain disturbances as are 
only indirectly connected with our sense organs. Now 
these complex physical conditions are capable, in many 
cases, of being excited in relative isolation. When this 
occurs we very generally find what has been already 
reported, namely, that to the elemeiitary and onore or less 
completely isolated physical disturbance , there corresponds 
a relatively simple mental state. So much then for the 
thus discovered relations of mental and of cerebral 
processes, ^o. farther discover that if we get again a 
total mental state as similar as possible to the one zvhich 
before we did not analyse (for example, if we strike 



114 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

again the same musical chord after having experienced 
one of its elements in isolation) zve can then, in a very 
large nnniber of cases, detect in the renewed mental state 
the elements which we have observed in isolation, and 
which we did ?tot observe in the original state. In brief, 
by devices of this sort we can learn to substitute 
analysed mental states for tinaiialysed mental states. ^ 
Since we can conceive this process of substitution 
carried much farther than our experimental processes 
have carried it at any particular stage of the process, 
we can form upon good empirical grounds a general 
theory of the type thus expressed : To every unanalysed 
mental state there may be made to correspond an analys- 
able mental state, or, i7i case of actual success, an actually 
analysed mental state. The physical conditions of the 
new state agree in the main with the conditions of 
the original mental state, except in so far as these 
conditions include such habits of brain as have been 
acquired by the intervening experiments, or by other 
analytic devices. The mental expression of these 
habits is the habit of analysis itself. In the analysed 
mental state the variety that consciousness detects 
corresponds to a variety that may also be discovered 
in the physical or physiological conditions, both of the 

1 This substitution is not possible in all cases where an analysis of the 
physical disturbance into simpler physical disturbances is possible, e.g. in 
case of the colours of mixed light. But the remark in the text is true of a 
large class of cases. 



uENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE II5 

original menta,! state, and of the analysed mental state. 
This is the summary of the empirical facts. The facts 
are important because they enable us to learn what we 
should otherwise miss concerning the constitution of 
the physical conditions upon which both our analysed 
and our unanalysed mental states depend. Further- 
more, the whole series of phenomena shows an inter- 
esting and uniform cormection betiveen analysed and 
unanalysed mental states. Since, as we shall see, the 
whole development of our intelligent life involves an in- 
creasing differentiation of our mental powers, it becomes 
of the utmost importance to understand the conditions 
upon which such differentiation depends. The experi- 
mental processes that we have summarised form an 
invaluable contribution to this knowledge. They show 
us by experiment how consciousness becomes differentiated, 
in other words, how a most important aspect of mental 
growth takes place. 

§ 46. Finally, if we choose another way of sum- 
marising these same facts, we may indeed say that 
since, in so many cases, an analysed state of conscious- 
ness can be made to correspond to a previous unana- 
lysed state in the way pointed out, and since, where 
this process is not carried out, we have good reasons 
to conceive it possible, we may declare that every state 
of consciousness which is due to a complex collection 
of sensory and central processes may, when viewed 
with reference to its physical conditions, be treated as 



Il6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

if it were complex of mental elements corresponding 
to certain more elementary physical processes, such 
that these more elementary processes, when isolated, 
are capable of producing elementary mental states, 
and such that these elementary states can be found 
by our attention as constituents of analysed states of 
consciousness. But when we use this mode of expres- 
sion, we must remember that we are employing a con- 
venient fiction. The mental state presented to the naive 
consciousness is just then what it seems to be, and is, 
literally speaking, no more various than at the moment 
we find it to be. It can be treated as if it were com- 
posed of elements that we do not analyse, only in so 
far as we compare it in the before-mentioned way with 
the analysed mental states that correspond to it when- 
ever our habits of analysis have been formedj and when 
we consider it with reference to its physical and physio- 
logical conditions. 

That other way of analysing mental states which 
has been mentioned in the course of the foregoing dis- 
cussion — that way of analysing the meaning which 
they possess in the logical or in the otherwise signifi- 
cant context of our mental life — does not concern the 
psychologist. The logician, the metaphysician, the 
moralist, and the student of aesthetics, are interested in 
the meaning of mental life. The psychologist is inter- 
ested, first, in what is literally present to consciousness 
at any one moment; second, in the various series or 



GENERAL FEATURES OF CONSCIOUS LIFE I17 

successions of mental states that are discoverable ; and 
third, in the laws which govern both these processes 
and the physical condition upon which they depend. 
For the psychologist, therefore, the complex meaning 
which every mental state undoubtedly possesses may 
indeed be infinite, but is not relevant. 



§ 47. We have now considered the general charac- 
teristics of consciousness, and have also in the most 
general outlines indicated its relation to its external 
conditions, and cerebral accompaniments; and in the 
remainder of our discussion our task will fall into the 
following- principal divisions : — 

(i) We shall make a summary statement, of the prin- 
cipal kinds of states of consciousness that occur within 
the range of our psychological experience ; and we 
shall consider these with especial relations to the sorts 
of physical conditions upon which they depend. Since 
states of consciousness take place from moment to 
moment in connection with the present state of the 
organism, and since in consequence all consciousness, 
at the moment when it takes place, may be regarded 
as an accompaniment of the responses of our sensitive 
organism to the world in which it exists, we may regard 
all this first division of our task as A Study of Sensi- 
tiveness. This study will contain three subdivisions, 
the first dealing with our Sensory Experience, the 



Il8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

second with our Images, the third with our Feel- 
ings, 

(2) Having become better acquainted, in this way, 
with the contents of consciousness as it passes, we 
shall next proceed in a series of chapters to a study of 
the relations that bind the consciousness of any mo- 
ment to previous experience. This division of our 
discussion may be regarded as A Study of Docility. 

(3) Since, as we saw before, our mental states not 
only appear to be dependent upon our relations to 
past experience, but also to depend upon factors that 
make possible that kind of variation of our conduct, 
and of our mental processes, which we sketched in one 
section of our discussion of the signs of mental life, we 
shall need to include under a third head a very sum- 
mary chapter which we may entitle. The Conditions 
OF Mental Initiative. 



i 



CHAPTER V 

Sensitiveness 

a. sensory experience 

§ 48, It is customary, in modern text-books of psy- 
chology, to introduce the study of all the higher forms 
of mental life by a statement of the results which 
experimental research has now reached regarding 
what are called the sensations. The term " sensation " 
is one employed, in its usual modern usage, in connec- 
tion with that theory of the real existence of mental 
elements to which we have already devoted some 
attention. For the theory in question a sensation 
is an elementary mental state that is due, either to 
the direct excitement of some sense organ and of 
the corresponding brain centre, or to some central 
brain process that may be regarded as equivalent to 
a disturbance produced through a sense organ. It is 
essential to the concept of a sensation, from this point 
of view, that a sensation should be mi ideally simple 
state. So far as the present state of our consciousness 
is directly' due to the excitement of our organs of 
sense, our co7isciousness is considered, by the theory in 
question, as a complex coiisisting of such elementary sen- 
sations. In so far as our present consciousness con- 

119 



120 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sists of images of objects that are not now physically 
present to us, it is said by the theory in question to be 
made up of elementary states which may be due to, or 
which perhaps must be due to, former sensations. In 
any case, these elementary states, as they at present 
occur, — the elementary mental states, namely, of which 
our images of absent objects consist, or of which 
in general our "ideas" are said to be composed, — 
are regarded by many recent psychologists as composed 
of elements which do not differ in any essential charac- 
ter from sensations. They are said to be " faint sen- 
sations." Or again they are called " centrally aroused 
sensations," so that they are often regarded not merely 
as being due to former sensations, but as being even 
at present of the nature of sensations. 

On the basis of such a theory, the concept of a sen- 
sation becomes one of the most fundamental impor- 
tance for all descriptive psychology. The only other 
sorts of elementary mental states which such views 
commonly recognise are the elementary states called 
" feelings." Apart from the feelings, our present 
consciousness is regarded by such theories as entirely 
made up of the elements called sensations. 

§ 49. Our own attitude toward theories of this type 
has already been indicated. In what sense conscious- 
ness can be said to be composed of any elementary 
states we have indicated, in so far as such indication 
is, in my opinion, possible. As we shall now have to 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE I2I 

see more in detail, all our present consciousness, of 
whatever type, is accompanied by central disturbances 
of the brain, which are either directly due to the ex- 
citements of our sense organs, or are of a type essen- 
tially similar to the disturbances which are due to the 
sense organs. In consequence, it is literally true for 
the psychologist that all consciousness, when it occurs, 
and whatever else it implies or contains, is a manifesta- 
tion of present sensitiveness, that is of the fact that our 
organism is disturbed by external or internal stimula- 
tions, and of the fact that these disturbances reach the 
cortex of the brain. It is also unquestionably true that 
every present excitement of the brain consists of pro- 
cesses which can be more or less perfectly resolved 
by experimental analysis into elementary processes, 
such as can occur in relative isolation ; and of these 
elementary processes there are a good many which, 
when excited in such relative isolation, are attended 
by relatively simple mental states. All this has been 
illustrated in the foregoing discussion, for example, 
by the case of musical chords and tones. But we can- 
not say that our consciousness in any literal sense con- 
sists of sensations, and still less that it consists of 
absolutely elementary sensations. Nor would the 
statement become true if we merely added the word 
"feeling" to the word "sensation." On the other 
hand, since our consciousness may thus be unquestion- 
ably described as an accompaniment of the sensitive- 



122 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ness of our organism, and since this sensitiveness of 
our organism is something very complex, and since 
its various modes can be more or less completely ana- 
lysed, considerable light is thrown upon the relation 
of consciousness, both to its conditions and to our own 
habits of conscious analysis, when we examine as pre- 
cisely as the modern experimental study of sensation 
does, the various relatively simple states of tnind that 
can be produced in response to relatively simple stim.7tla- 
tions of our sense organs. 

§ 50. From our point of view, then, a sensation may 
be defined as a relatively simple mental state, which we 
can by experiment more or less completely isolate, and 
which, when isolated, is found to be due to a relatively 
simple stimulation of brain centres, either through the 
sense organs or through the revival of dispositions 
which previous sense disturbance has left in the brain 
centres. The relation of sensations to our actual 
consciousness, as it from moment to moment occurs, is 
the one formerly pointed out, namely, that to every 
present conscious state there may be made to corre- 
spond a mental state, or a collection of mental states 
which through training we have learned to analyse, and 
that, in these analysed mental states, elements, corre- 
sponding to what we have called sensations, will be 
found to be prominent. To discover this principle is 
to show how largely our conscious state at any moment, 
however lofty its dignity, or however unanalysable it 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 123 

then may seem, is actually due to conditions that ac- 
company the excitement of our sense organs in de- 
terminate fashion. 

§ 51. The general relations between our sense organs 
and the conscious present moments of our lives may be 
briefly summarised as follows : — In our normal waking 
life every conscious process, of whatever grade, may be 
said to be supported by sensory stimuli ; that is, our con- 
sciousness accompanies central nervous processes that 
depend upon the current stimulation of sense organs. 
On the other hand, every conscious process of normal 
waking life accompanies nervous processes that at least 
tend to produce more or less definite movements, and 
that, if not controlled through inhibitory processes, 
actually do so. A process of high intellectual level, 
such as writing, obviously illustrates this general 
principle. The conscious processes that occur when 
we write are in their most essential features inseparable 
from the sensory stimuli that we receive as we write, 
and from the movements that constitute the writing 
process itself. But the same holds true of mental 
activities that do not so obviously express themselves 
without in characteristic movements, and that are gen- 
erally supposed to be mainly independent of our 
momentary relations to the outer world. The most 
absorbed meditation is affected by the sensory stimuli 
that we are receiving. This is shown by our well- 
known preference for certain places, surroundings, or 



124 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

objects, as aids to our meditations. One carries on a 
meditation of a given type best in his study, or again 
best in church, or again by preference during a walk in 
the fields. At such times one may not be at all directly 
conscious of how one's inner process is related to the 
sensory stimuli. Thus, in the fields, one may suppose 
that one is entirely oblivious of the natural facts about 
one, just because one is absorbed in some train of 
thought that bears on a scientific topic, or on a personal 
and practical problem. But none the less, the external 
objects are all the time sending in their sensory dis- 
turbances. These maintain certain current conditions 
of the brain. Were these conditions to change, the 
train of thought would change. And even where the 
connection between surrounding objects and the train of 
thought pursued is by no means one of which we are 
definitely conscious, the just mentioned preference for 
one sort of surrounding as against another, as the place 
for a given kind of meditation, illustrates how important 
this relation may be. 

It is true that, for the purpose of supporting certain 
kinds of inner life, it is customary to cut off certain 
sensory stimuli. And while this is in obvious accord- 
ance with the principle here in question, it is also true 
that in certain cases the process may go so far as to 
make it appear as if the exclusion of sensation alto- 
gether, or as far as possible, is the device most useful 
for supporting some processes of meditation, or some 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 1 25 

phases of what is often called the "interior life." Thus, 
religious meditation has often been supported by de- 
vices which include solitude, going " into the closet and 
shutting the door," and the effort to obtain silence in 
one's surroundings. Mystics and ascetics have carried 
such processes of exclusion of external sensory disturb- 
ances very far ; and have often supposed them to prove 
that certain aspects of the higher life are dependent 
upon the exclusion, rather than upon the support, of 
any sensory stimuli. 

But the psychologist is obliged to note that all such 
processes of excluding certain sensory stimuli, are sim- 
ply devices for the securing of the presence of other 
sensory stimuli. When the eyes are closed, we still 
have a visual experience, that of the darkness of the 
field of vision — an experience of a distinctly sensory 
character, due to the remaining activities of the retina 
of the eye. If silence is obtained so far as external 
sounds are concerned, one may all the more hear 
sounds due to the circulation of the blood. To sup- 
press the disturbances of the usually more prominent 
types, means all the more to emphasise those masses 
of sensory disturbance which are due to our internal 
organs. The importance that instinct or habit may 
give to these organic sense disturbances, when once 
our consciousness comes to be very strongly coloured 
through their presence, may be very great. The liter- 
ature of meditation is full of evidences of the promi- 



126 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

nence that experiences thus determined have possessed 
in the life of those who often imagined themselves to 
be independent of the senses in precisely the highest 
of their mental processes. Thus fasting and wakeful- 
ness are productive of characteristic, although, in vari- 
ous people, of decidedly different sorts of sensory 
experience, due to the alterations of organic condi- 
tions. If an ascetic or a meditative person uses 
fasting or vigil as a means to support his medita- 
tion, he is quite as definitely dependent upon the ex- 
citement of certain sense organs as if he ate olives or 
played the violin. And it is perfectly true that certain 
of the organic sensations have a relation to the higher 
mental life which those who are devoted to the observa- 
tion of things outside the organism often fail to discover. 
But the connection between our mental and sensory 
life is not even thus exhausted. For, as we have just 
said, our sense disturbances, and the attendant central 
processes of whatever type, normally tend to get 
themselves expressed outwardly in motion. But our 
movements, when they occur, are at every stage the source 
of new sensory experiences. The contractions of mus- 
cles, the series of positions of a moving organ such as 
the hand or the leg, become reflected in our conscious- 
ness through sensory disturbances that inform ns of 
what takes place wheji we move. These sensory dis- 
turbances are largely of the kind that, when isolated, 
give us the sensations known as the muscular sensa- 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 127 

tions, the joint sensations, the sensations of strain, and 
in general our motor experiettces . Visual experiences 
take part in this same process whereby we become 
aware of our movements. For at every moment, as we 
walk, we guide our steps by means of the eye ; and 
most of the skilful activities of the hand are more or 
less supported in the same way. Experiences due to 
the sense of hearing guide us whenever we use the 
voice ; so that deafness, even when acquired very late 
in life, tends to affect vocal skill. The weight of the 
experimental and pathological evidence is to the effect 
that we are unaware of our own movements except in 
terms of the sensory experiences which thus accompany 
and result from tJieir occurrence. To the outgoing ner- 
vous current in the motor nerves, consciousness does 
not directly correspond. But all the more must our 
sensory experiences become important for the support 
of our voluntary as well as of our intellectual life, in 
view of the fact that our sensory experience is not only 
a constant accompaniment of the processes that deter- 
mine our movements, but furnishes the basis for the 
only knowledge that we are able to possess of what 
our movements are. 

The practical application of the foregoing considera- 
tions regarding the centrally important place which sen- 
sory experience occupies in our lives, is obvious, and is, 
for every one who has to guide minds, of the most criti- 
cal importance. The development and support of men- 



128 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tal activities of every grade is dependent upon tJie constant 
and proper use of the sense organs. Every cultivation of 
even the highest inner life involves a cultivation of the 
sense organs. To use a very imperfect simile : the 
sense organs are related to the higher mental life some- 
what as the keys and stops of the organ are related to 
the music. In vain is the organist's skill, if the keys 
and stops will not work. In vain is the composer's art, 
if the mechanism of the instrument is not also in work- 
ing order. 

The life of the senses does not constitute a sort of 
lower life, over against which the higher intellectual, 
emotional, and voluntary life stands, as a markedly con- 
trasted region, relatively independent of the other, and 
ideally capable of a certain divorce from it. On the 
contrary, sensory experience plays its part, and its essen- 
tial part, in the very highest of our spiritual existence. 
When we wish to cultivate processes of abstract think- 
ing, our devices must therefore include a fitting plan for 
the cultivation of the senses, and must not seek to 
exclude sense experience as such, but only to select 
among sensory experiences those that will prove useful 
for a purpose. 

In the attempt to cultivate and to support religious 
meditation of the higher type, the ritualist has con- 
sequently often appeared more psychological in his 
devices than did the Puritan of old, who endeavoured to 
support religious life by excluding what he regarded as 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 1 29 

a confusing or as a corrupting appeal to the senses. In 
so far as the devices of exclusion which so often charac- 
terise the Puritan forms of worship, were accompanied by 
an equal fear both of externally attractive sense experi- 
ences, and of many of the forms of worship which mys- 
tics have employed for the sake of arousing the fitting 
organic sensations, Puritanism, in some of its forms, 
seems to have tended inevitably to the impoverishment 
of religious experience. When it escaped this result, 
and passed through its times of awakening and of fer- 
vour, its success was due not to its mere exclusion of 
appeals to the senses, but to its encouragement of those 
forms of sensory experience which were connected with 
strenuous and dutiful activities, and with the motor pro- 
cesses accompanying earnest prayer. The mystics 
themselves, in waiting for " the voice of the spirit," 
were psychologically aided by the concentration of their 
attention upon certain types of organic sensation. In 
brief, whatever be the best form of religious training, it 
ought deliberately to make use of a proper appeal to the 
senses. 

In general, then, higher mental training depends not 
upon avoiding sensory experience, but upon selecting 
the right kind of sense disturbance, and upon present- 
ing sensory experiences in such order as to train fitting 
habits of movement. 

§ 52. Any extended discussion of the various types 
of special sensations is impossible in this place. A full 



I30 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

account would demand, in the present state of experi- 
mental research, hundreds of pages. A mere catalogue 
of the distinguishable sorts of simple sensory experi- 
ences would prove uninstructive. For fuller accounts 
the reader must accordingly be referred to more special 
treatises. Our concern is here with some of the most 
general considerations as to the classification of our 
sensory experience. 

One must distinguish, in the first place, between the 
sensory states that especially or principally give us 
information concerni7ig the tnovements and the internal 
changes of our organism, and those which principally 
give us information regarding stimuli which are exter- 
nal to the organism. 

The distinction here in question is indeed not alto- 
gether a sharp one. It cannot be sharp, simply because 
every external disturbance which affects our conscious- 
ness is also, in some degree, a disturbance of the whole 
organism. Moreover, when I move my hand, in order to 
grasp an object, I both see the outer object and also see 
my moving hand, so that, in this case, sensory experi- 
ences of the same general type give me information both 
concerning my own movements and concerning the exter- 
nal things. I use both these results of seeing as I guide 
my act of grasping. The same holds true when, in 
walking, I both see the inequalities of the path, and 
by means of my eyes am able in part to guide the 
movements whereby I adjust my feet to the ground; 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 131 

or when, in conversing, I both hear my fellow's speech 
and am able, through my ear, to guide the modulations 
of my own voice. But there are indeed certain sorts of 
sensory experience, namely, the so-called " organic sen- 
sations," which are principally of use as informing me 
regarding the internal states of my organism ; while 
such sensory experiences as those of sight are most 
indispensable to me when they are sources of know- 
ledge about facts external to my organism. For while 
I can learn to carry out very compHcated voluntary 
movements in the dark, and could learn such arts even 
if I were blind ; on the other hand, if I were blind, I 
could never learn to distinguish between the presence 
and absence of light in the outer world. 

§ 53. Beginning, then, with the sensory experiences 
which are predominantly inteimal, i.e. which especially 
inform one as to the states and the changes of one's 
own organism, we may name, first, the " organic 
sensations " themselves. Sensory experiences of this 
type form a vast, and in part a very vaguely complex 
realm ; and the experimental production of analysed 
states of mind, such as enable us to study definite 
small groups of organic sensations in isolation, is ex- 
tremely difficult. We are able, however, to name, as 
especially' important amongst the organic sensory 
experiences: (i) those which inform us as to the 
general position of oitr bodies, and as to the changes in 
the bodily equilibrium. These experiences include cer- 



132 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tain sensory facts that enable us to judge of the direc- 
tion of movement of the organism, especially of the 
head, whenever this direction is suddenly altered. 
(2) We have to name those organic sensory experiences 
by which we become aware of our ino^'e special and 
differentiated movements, in so far as these are known 
to us through sense disturbances directly due to the 
contraction of muscles, the stretcJiing of tendons, the 
contact of the internal surfaces of joints, etc. There 
are also (3) those experiences which take the form 
of more or less sharply localised internal pains; 
(4) those complexes of sensory experience which 
appear in hunger, thirst, and similar organic states; 
and (5) those which, when taken together with cer- 
tain masses of feelings, give special character to our 
emotional experiences (as for instance the " choking 
in the throat " which accompanies anger, and many 
of the other sensory accompaniments of emotion). 
Of the importance of these organic sensations, as 
constituting a decidedly fimdamental sensory aspect of 
all our mental life, we shall speak further in other con- 
nections. 

Next to the organic sensations, both in their gen- 
eral character and in the kind of significance which 
they possess for our mental life, stand the sensory ex- 
periences due to the disturbances of the skin. In case 
of a large number of our organic sensory experiences, 
the disturbances of the skin due to stretching, to wrin- 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 133 

kling, to tickling, to perspiration, etc., join with the more 
internal organic conditions to determine what we notice 
as our own present bodily condition. The same is 
true of the sensations of pain, which a vast number of 
points on the skin can so freely give us. 

In so far the " dermal sense," as it is sometimes 
called, is a part of the condition of pur organic sensory 
experience. But the skin also contains a vast number 
of sense organs which are of constant use to us in learn- 
ing about external objects. The sensory experiences 
here in question are those of contact and of temperature. 
They are due to the excitation of points on the skia 
which differ for the various special sorts of experiences 
in question. Experiment shows that certain points of 
the skin are especially sensitive to stimulations given by 
cold Q\y]Q.zX.'&, while other points are sensitive to disturb^ 
ances due to hot objects. Our ordinary sensory expe- 
rience of warmth or of cold is due to a complex excite- 
ment of many points of both these types. Still other 
points on the skin, very wealthily interspersed amongst 
the others, give us, if excited in isolation, sensations of 
contact or of pressure. Complex sensory excitations, 
due to the disturbances of the skin, sometimes with aa4 
sometimes without, notable accompanying organic dis- 
turbances, give us our experiences of hard and soft, of 
rough and smooth, of dry and moist objects. Sensory 
experiences due to our own movements, made as we ex- 
plore and handle objects, are seldom lacking as aspects 



134 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

or portions of the experiences whereby we judge both 
the foregoing, and many other of the quaUties of the 
bodies with \^/hich we come in contact. S 

§ 54. Next to the dermal sensations, in that series of 
our sensory experiences which is now in question, come 
experiences of the senses of taste and smell. These, 
as they usually appear in our consciousness, are 
very decidedly coloured by feelings, and are conse- 
quently closely associated in our mind with our 
estimate of our own bodily state ; but, on the other 
hand, they are constantly used as indications of the 
nature of external objects. The sensory experiences 
of these two senses are very frequently aroused 
together. This is the case with most articles of food. 
Experimental analysis shows that, while the sense of 
taste is comparatively simple in its experiences, there 
being but four distinct qualities that can be referred to 
the sense of taste alone, the sense of smell, on the other 
hand, gives us experiences of an enormous variety, for 
which no satisfactory classification has yet been found. 
The four classes of taste experiences are those of the 
qualities : sweet, acid, salt, and bitter. For the experi- 
ences of the sense of smell, language has a considerable, 
but altogether inadequate collection of names, mostly 
derived from the names of the objects to which the 
odours belong. The more precise relations among these 
odours are very little known either to common sense or 
to psychologists. 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 135 

The two highest among the senses are those of sight 
and hearing. Their experiences are of special impor- 
tance to us in all our relations to the world outside the 
organism. Yet, as has already been pointed out, we 
also use the data of these senses in becoming aware of 
our own reactions to the environment. These senses 
then do indeed make us acquainted with our own 
bodily state, but their predominant value lies in the 
knowledge of outer objects that they furnish. 

The sensory experiences of the sense of sight are of 
two great classes, — those possessed of the quality known 
as colour, and those possessed of the quality of colourless 
light. As to the precise relation of these two classes of 
experiences, it is impossible here further to speak. We 
can, however, point out that the sensory experiences of 
the sense of sight are capable of a decidedly exhaustive 
classification, and constitute one of the best-known 
regions of sensory experience. The experiences of 
the sense of hearing belong to the two great classes 
of the noises and of the musical tones. The musical 
tones have relationships whose aesthetic importance has 
made them extremely familiar. Nowhere better than in 
the case of the sense of hearing are we able to study 
the precise relations between our sensory experiences 
and their external physical causes ; but the theory of 
the sense experiences of hearing forms again a specialty 
far too complex for the present discussion to enter 
upon. 



136 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

As the senses of sight and of hearing are preeminent 
in their power to give us an acquaintance with the ex- 
ternal world, so they are especially marked by the sorts 
of discriminating analysis which their sensory experi- 
ences awaken in the trained consciousness. The vari- 
ous sensory experiences of the sense of sight come to 
us, from moment to moment, with such an order and 
arrangement that we are able clearly to distinguish one 
visible object from another, and, with minute accuracy, 
to differentiate one part of the field of vision from 
another part. The experiences of the sense of hearing 
are such as to permit the training of a very high degree 
of power to analyse the constitution of sounds — a 
power of which we have already made mention in 
giving our examples of the general nature of analysed 
states of mind. 

§ 55. Common to all the various types of sensory 
experiences which have been indicated in the foregoing 
discussion, is the presence of tzvo notable characters 
which are sometimes called Attributes of Sensation. 
Every sensation possesses, namely. Quality and Inten- 
sity. Sensations differ in quality when the difference 
is of the sort whereby we distinguish two colours, or is 
of the sort whereby we distinguish hot and cold, or 
sweet and bitter. Two sensations differ in intensity 
when they differ as a loud tone at a given pitch differs 
from a softer tone at the same pitch, or as our experi- 
ence of a notable pressure differs from our experience 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 1 37 

of a very light pressure. The characteristics of quality 
and of intensity can be most exactly attributed to single 
sensations in so far as the latter have been experimen- 
tally isolated. But the same characters are to be found 
also in the masses of sensory experience which charac- 
terise our naive consciousness. Ideally speaking, sen- 
sations or sensory experiences of any sort can be exactly 
compared in intensity only in so far as they very closely 
agree in quality. Thus, it is impossible to say whether 
a given sensory experience of weight is more intense in 
its heaviness than a given sound is intense in its loud- 
ness. Yet, owing to the fact that entirely isolated 
sensations which are precisely the same in quality, but 
which differ only in intensity, are decidedly ideal objects 
of psychological conception, comparisons of the inten- 
sity of our experiences are generally more or less min- 
gled with differences of quality. The variations in 
intensity of sensation are capable of being arranged 
in series corresponding, although not proportionate, to 
the physical magnitudes of the external sources of 
stimulation. To a stimulation that sufficiently exceeds 
another in magnitude, there will correspond, when com- 
parisons in intensity are possible, a sensory experience 
of a noticeably greater intensity. But the correspond- 
ence in question must not be interpreted as implying 
that the intensities of sensations are themselves quan- 
tities in the same sense in which physical magnitudes 
are quantities. As to the relation between the intensi- 



138 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ties of sensations and the magnitudes of the stimuH, 
there has been very elaborate experimental investiga- 
tion. The outcome of this investigation has been for- 
mulated in the so-called " psycho-physic law," which 
we shall briefly consider later under the head of Mental 
Docility. 

The qualities of sensation have a much richer vari- 
ety than the variations in intensity possess ; for while 
the variations in the intensity of sensory experiences 
possessing the same quality form a simple series, the 
variations of quality of our sensory experiences can 
be arranged in no single series, but are presented to 
our attention, in so far as we have learned to discrimi- 
nate them, in a very great complexity of series of 
facts. In our indication of the various general classes 
of sensations, we have already made some mention of 
certain characteristic and well-known qualities of sen- 
sory experience. The various senses are distinguished 
from one another in terms of sense qualities. Thus, 
the colours and the sounds differ from one another in 
quality. Here the difference of quality is associated 
with a very obvious difference of the sense organs. In 
other cases, where it requires decidedly careful experi- 
ments to detect any difference of the sense organs, the 
differences in quality first attract our attention. So 
it has been, for instance, in the case of the sense 
experience of the hot and cold points of the skin. 
It was long supposed that the temperature sense pos- 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 139 

sessed a single type of sense organs, all of which 
gave us, according to the intensity of the stimulation, 
experiences of hot and cold qualities. It is now- 
known that these qualities are due to the excitation 
of different sense organs. But within the field of any 
one sense, as for instance the sense of sight, we have 
variations of sense quality which correspond not only 
to differences of sense organ but also to differences 
in the way in which a single sense organ is stimulated 
by different external disturbances. No absolutely gen- 
eral rule can therefore be given as to the extent to 
which qualitative differences of sensory experiences 
imply the excitation of different sense organs. But, 
on the whole, tJie qualities of sensation as they come 
to consciotisness depend, in general, ttpon two types of 
facts, namely, first upon the different sense organs stimu- 
lated, and secondly upon the pJiysically different char- 
acters of the external stimuli. 

§ 56. It remains to speak of still another attribute 
possessed by a great number of our sensory expe- 
riences, and especially by those of the dermal sense 
and of the sense of sight. This character is the one 
upon which our developed ideas of Space depend. 
It is a character noticeable in every instance of our 
sensory experiences of the types in question, however 
simple the experience may otherwise be. This char- 
acter may be called Extensity. Thus, every disturb- 
ance of the sense of sight gives us an impression of 



140 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

light which, even if it be of the character of the 
simplest possible point of light, still possesses some 
feature whereby the point of light is localised in the 
field of vision, i.e. is related to our consciousness of 
visual space. Our ordinary experiences of the sense 
of sight are experiences of a disturbance which 
extend over a considerable portion of the field of 
vision. Precisely so, in the field of the experiences 
of touch, we are normally affected by stimuli which 
appear to us to be in contact with a considerable 
surface of the skin. And, even in case of the most 
nearly simple or punctual sensation of touch which 
we can experience, there still remains about this ex- 
perience a character which enables us to localise with 
considerable accuracy the point touched. 

While the accurate localisation of our sensory ex- 
periences of sight and touch unquestionably depends 
upon habits and associations which are phenomena of 
our docility, and not of our merely present sensory 
experience, it is impossible to regard our present visual 
and tactile experiences, even when taken apart from 
habit, as wholly destitute of spatial characters. What- 
ever we see or touch has spatial magnitude as one of 
its directly presented characters. How far extensity 
belongs in any measure to the senses of smell and 
taste when considered in themselves, apart from their 
associations with other sensory experience, is a matter 
of question. The experiences of the sense of hearing 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 141 

seem to possess some measure of extensity; and this 
character is very markedly present in a considerable 
portion of our organic sensations, if not in all of them. 
So that there is much to say for the view that all oicr 
sensory experience witJioiit exception possesses the pri-rni- 
iive character upon which our developed notion of space 
is founded. 

To say, however, that this character belongs to our 
various sensory experiences, is not to say that the char- 
acter in question is in all respects as ultimate and inex- 
plicable as are the qualities of our sensations. Why the 
colours should possess their immediate quality, and the 
sounds their quality, it is of course impossible to at- 
tempt in any sense to explain. But why our sensory 
experiences possess a certain primitive extensity may 
be, not indeed entirely explained, but brought into 
relation with other facts, if we take account of certain 
phenomena which have important relations to our 
whole organic life. The researches of Loeb and 
others have called attention, in the recent literature of 
genetic psychology, to the vast importance which is pos- 
sessed, in all grades of animal life, by the types of reac- 
tion which have been called tropisms of Orientation} 
We earlier made mention of such reactions when we 
were speaking of the various tropisms which Loeb has 
experimentally examined, as they exist in lower organ- 
isms. The general character of such reactions is that 

^ Cf. Fritz Hartmann's monograph, Die Orieittirung, Leipzig, 1902. 



142 



OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 



they determine, in an organism of a given type, a certain 
characteristic normal positio7i of the organism with 
reference to its envh'onment, and certain equally char- 
acteristic tendencies on the part of the organism to 
recover its normal position when it is for any reason 
temporarily lost, and to assume, in the presence of 
stimuli of certain types, certain directioiis of movement 
and certain attitudes which may persist through a great 
variety of special activities. The phenomena here in 
question are, in a sense, very familiar to us all. The 
animal laid upon its back may struggle back again 
to the normal position. Or again, the human being 
when engaged in normal activities either sits or stands 
erect. When the eyes are engaged in their normal 
activity, the head is held erect, or, if these normal 
attitudes are modified, as in reading or in writing, the 
modification occurs only within certain limits. To 
attempt to carry on the same activities when lying on 
one's back, leads to discomfort, and interferes with the 
normal special movement of the eyes. It is thus a 
familiar fact that a certain orientatioji of body, that is, 
a certain general direction of the organism with reference 
to its environment and tvith reference to the most impor- 
tant kinds of stimulation which are falling up07i it, is a 
condition prior to all special activities. Hence the reac- 
tions of orientation are amongst the most fundatnental 
phenomena of healthy life. Profound disturbances of 
orientation necessarily imply very considerable defects, 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 143 

and in most cases very gravely important defects, in 
central functions. Thus our responses to our environ- 
ment are not only special deeds, such as grasping this 
object, or looking at that object, but include general 
attitudes, namely, such acts as sitting or standing erect 
or holding the head up in order that we may see. And 
the special acts are ahvays superposed upon the general 
acts, in such wise that if the general tropisms of 
orientation are seriously disturbed, the special acts, 
however habitual, will be interfered with or will prove 
to be impossible. 

Now, as has been pointed out in the foregoing, all 
our voluntary activities tend to be represented from 
moment to moment in our sensory experience. It 
follows therefore that our sensory experience at any 
moment zvill stand partly for our more general activities 
of orientation, and partly for our more special reactions to 
individual objects. Since, meanwhile, every disturbance 
produced in us by an external object will become a con- 
scious disturbance only in so far as we tend to respond 
to the presence of this object in some way, all our 
particular sensory expeinences will be related, not only to 
our special acts, but to ottr general acts of orientation, and 
to those experiences which result from these acts. 

Now the acts of orientation — such acts as holding 
ourselves erect, balancing as we move, keeping the 
organism as a whole alert in its relations to the world — 
are attended by organic sensations of a massive but 



144 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

usually unanalysed character. These include, for 
instance, those organic sensations by means of which 
our movements are so controlled that we keep our 
equilibrium — the organic sensations, namely, which are 
deranged when we are dizzy. It is well known how the 
sensations of dizziness are generally associated with a 
defect, and, if they are intense, with a profound failure, 
of orientation. On the other hand, in normal conditions, 
our sensations of equilibrium are of the utmost impor- 
tance as a basis for guiding all our special acts.^ Fur- 
thermore, the movements that we make as we keep our 
equilibrium are represented in our consciousness by 
numerous massive sensory experiences due to muscles, 
joints, etc. 

It follows that our sensory consciousness of the world 
in which we are, and of our own response to this world, 
will constantly be of a type such that if we become con- 
scious of any particular sensory experiencey especially of 
the senses of sight and of touch, we shall discriminate 
this particular experience tipon a backgrotmd of sensory 
experience which is made up of the general present con- 
tents due to our experiences of orientation. The experi- 
ences of orientation will form a general basis for our 
special sensory consciousness. Within the whole of ex- 
perience that our experiences of orientation determine, 
all our special sensory experiences will be found. This 

1 These sensory experiences are due to the organ of the so-called " static 
sense," viz., to the semicircular canals of the internal ear. 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 145 

will be especially true of the senses of sight and of 
touch, because of the very significant relations of these 
experiences to certain specific movements of the eyes 
and of the organs of locomotion. It will be to a less 
extent true of the experiences of sound, in so far as 
these are related to movements of the head. It will be 
to a still less degree true of the sensory experiences of 
smell and of taste, because the relation of these to 
specific voluntary movements is less constant, or is such 
as less to alter our relation to our external environment. 
It appears, in consequence, that the character of 
extensity possessed by our individual sensations is a 
character which has some intimate connection tvith the 
relation possessed by these experiences to the total complex 
of our experiences of orientation. When our experiences 
of orientation come to us as a single undifferentiated 
whole, they appear to constitute our primal experience 
of the character known as extensity. Our organism, as 
something oriented in a particular way in reference to 
its environment, appears in consciousness as some- 
thing large, and as something that possesses what we 
shall learn to call "directions," just as soon as we have 
begun to discriminate within the total experience. Our 
special sensory experiences of the types most concerned 
with our particular movements are such that they tend 
to appear as facts differentiated zvithin this whole of onr 
total experience of organic orientation. That this fact 
should occur, we do not indeed attempt here wholly to 



146 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

explain. But we point out that the conscious relation- 
ship here mentioned is parallel to, or correspondent 
with, that relation between our general acts of orienta- 
tion and our special acts which we have already indi- 
cated in the foregoing summary. As the general 
orientation of the organism is to its special acts and 
sensory experiences, so is, in our consciousness, our 
general organic sensory experience of the presence and 
the total orientation of our organic activity, to the 
special experiences which our differentiated acts give 
us. Whatever character a particular sensory experi- 
ence possesses which enables us to localise this experi- 
ence as coming at a certain point in the organism, and 
whatever character a given movement possesses which 
enables us to specify its particular direction and other 
special characters, and, finally, whatever character a 
complex visual or tactual experience possesses which 
enables us to judge of the size of the object that we 
see or touch, all such sensory experiences appear to 
our consciousness as facts existent within a certain 
primitive whole, which, apart from differentiation, is otir 
experience of the general orientation of the entire organ- 
ism. We know special facts about space, such as sizes, 
particular directions, and distances, in terms of certain 
acts of our own, which we either perform from moment 
to moment, or imagine in consequence of habits already 
formed. We know of the world as possessing spatial char- 
acters at all, because we experience our general relation to 



SENSITIVENESS — SENSORY EXPERIENCE 147 

our environment in the form of our organic sensory expe- 
riences of orientation. The special facts of our spatial 
consciousness are related to our general experience of 
extensity, becanse the single facts of sense, and the sin- 
gle movements which we make, are always related to, 
or, as one may say, are differentiations of, our general 
orientation} 

1 Compare the somewhat different but related view as to the basis of 
our consciousness of extensity in the monograph of Storch, " Muskelfunk- 
tion und Bewusstsein " in Number X of the Grenzfragen des Nerven und 
Seelenlebens, 1 901. 



CHAPTER VI 

Sensitiveness 

b. mental imagery 

§ 57. The field of mental sensitiveness includes not 
merely those aspects of our mental life which are due 
to the present disturbance of sense organs. It in- 
cludes also those processes whose mental aspects 
appear in the Images which constantly accompany 
all our more complex conscious processes. These 
linages are in general the indii^ect results of previous 
sensory disturbances. In so far the consideration of 
the conditions which determine their appearance be- 
longs under the head of Mental Docility. On the 
other hand, in so far as the images from moment to 
moment appear, they depend upon the present state of 
the brain. They manifest a part of the present dis- 
turbance which is produced in us by our whole rela- 
tion to the world about us. They are therefore in 
so far manifestations of our present sensitiveness to 
such disturbances. If we suppose, by way of a 
fiction, that there could exist a mental state consist- 
ing altogether of mental images, and involving no 
aspects of consciousness due to the present disturb- 

148 



SENSITIVENESS — MENTAL IMAGERY 1 49 

ance of our organs of external or of organic sensa- 
tion, this mental state would none the less accompany 
a condition of brain which would itself be a part of 
our organic response to the situation in which at any- 
time we find ourselves. Such a mental state would, 
therefore, manifest our sensitiveness, in so far as our 
organism thrills, or shows resonance, in consequence 
of what is happening to us. For all our central con- 
ditions are affected by sensory disturbances, even 
when the sensory disturbances in question are not 
directly manifested in our conscious state in the form 
of present and conscious sensory experience. 

It is, therefore, natural that the partisans of the 
usual view, which regards our consciousness as a 
complex of mental elements, should consider our 
images as complexes of what are often called " cen- 
trally aroused sensations," that is, sensations due not 
to the disturbance of sense organs, but to disturbances 
which reach given brain centres from other brain cen- 
tres, and not directly from sensory nerves. This way 
of stating the case calls proper attention to the fact 
that our sensitiveness at any moment includes pro- 
cesses whose physical aspect is due to disturbances 
that pass from one part of the brain to the other, 
and that, therefore, may be referred to what we have 
just called the resonance of our central organs. For 
the environment of every portion of the brain in- 
cludes not only the external world and the organism 



I50 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

outside the brain, but the rest of the brain, in so far 
as what gdes on at one point in the brain can be 
due to stimulations brought thither from other points of 
the brain. 

When special mental images come to our conscious- 
ness as a distinguishable part of our total mental 
state, they are of types that correspond to the various 
types of our sensory experience. Thus we have 
visual images, images of sound, of touch, and so on. 
These images differ from our current sense experi- 
ences, due to external stimulation, or to organic con- 
ditions outside the brain, in ways which may be 
generally characterised thus : The images are usu- 
ally somewhat fainter, and in fact very much fainter, 
than our sensory experiences themselves. They are 
vague. They are not so clear or so definite in out- 
line and in structure as are the sensory experiences 
due to the direct presence of external objects. They 
are commonly more evanescent and changeable than 
are the sensory experiences. It becomes more diffi- 
cult to us to observe their minor differences when we 
compare them together, or when we endeavour to com- 
pare them with present sensory experience. A good 
illustration of this character of our mental images is 
the difficulty of trying to match the colour of some 
absent object, with the colour of some present object, 
when we have only the image of the absent object 
to guide our process of matching. There exist per- 



SENSITIVENESS — MENTAL IMAGERY 15I 

sons who in shopping can choose a ribbon that will 
precisely match a ribbon that they have left at home, 
although they carry no sample with them. But such 
success is comparatively rare. In consequence of 
such differences, images have normally no tendency 
to be mistaken for present sense experiences. Yet 
the boundary line is, in certain conditions of conscious- 
ness, by no means perfectly sharp. When we listen 
at night for an expected footstep, or in a silent place 
for the anticipated ringing of a distant bell, we may 
"seem to hear" the sound before it really takes place ; 
and under such conditions images and sensory expe- 
riences tend to become confused. The relative vague- 
ness of bur images when compared with our normal 
sensory experiences comes to light as soon as we 
begin to cross-question ourselves with regard to what 
we can observe in the image. Thus we can form 
after a fashion a visual image of a printed page. 
But if we ask ourselves what is the third word in the 
fourth line, we find in most cases that the image is 
unable to tell us. 

Notwithstanding these usual characteristics of our 
images, closer examination shows that mental imagery 
varies very widely from mind to mind, and probably, 
if we were able to compare directly the processes of 
various minds, we should find a diversity even wider 
than our present means of comparison make clear. 

§ 58. The modern study of the types of mental 



152 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

imagery was begun by Mr. Francis Galton, who pub- 
lished his first results in the book called Inquiries 
into Human Faculty and its Development. Galton 
used the method of the so-called " questionaire " — 
a method since widely used in other psychological 
researches. He sent, namely, a circular to a large 
number of people, asking them to state in some 
detail the way in which they formed mental pictures 
of objects. His circular related to the so-called visual 
imagination, that is, to the power of seeing absent 
objects "with the mind's eye," or of forming images 
of objects that, when present, had been perceived 
through the sense of sight. He studied, in particular, 
the visual images of familiar objects. His results 
have since been supplemented by a large number of 
similar inquiries, many of which have been extended 
so as to cover the images belonging to other senses 
than that of sight. Certain pathological facts, pre- 
sented by the cases of persons whose normal mental 
imagery had been affected by brain disease, called 
attention, a few years after the publication of Galton's 
study, to the importance of comparing the promi- 
nence which the imagery of one sense had in a life 
of any given person, with the importance possessed 
by the imagery of other senses. 

The general results of these researches have been i 
to show that the imagery of any one sense, in par- 
ticular that of sight, has very great normal varia- 



i 



SENSITIVENESS — MENTAL IMAGERY 1 53 

tion from person to person. While in general the 
rule holds that normal mental imagery differs in a 
very marked fashion from the experiences produced 
through the direct excitation of sense organs, it 
is still possible [to find people in whom the visual 
images seem decidedly comparable in clearness, 
in vividness, and in detail to the original sense per- 
ception. In many such persons it is possible to see 
" in the mind's eye " more of a given familiar scene, 
such as the interior of a room, than could be seen 
from any one point of view in actual perception. It 
is as if various images coalesced to form a mental 
whole, which could not be attained in any one act 
of perception. On the other hand, a very large num- 
ber of persons have visual imagery which they them- 
selves describe as very much less clear and definite 
than the original object; and the test of asking such 
persons questions about how much of the detail of a 
visualised object they can report, if the test be 
further controlled by comparing the report with the 
original object, shows very decided limitations as to 
the minuteness and the accuracy of the images that 
are in question. A familiar test takes the form of 
asking a person to visualise the face of his own 
watch, and then to answer questions about the figures 
on the watch face, and the position of the dial of the 
second-hand with reference to these figures. Such 
tests may be multipHed indefinitely. They show that 



154 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

a large number of persons who have but a moderate 
vividness and clearness of visual imagination are 
conscious of images which are decidedly defective (i) 
as to the scope of the field which they can get 
before them in imagination, (2) as to the brightness 
of the light and the precise shade of colour in this 
field, and (3) as to the minuteness of detail which is 
represented in the image. The last feature, namely, 
the minuteness of detail, has a lower limit that, in 
such cases, is very decidedly low when it is compared 
with the normal precision of actual visual perceptions. 
In many cases of a poorer visual imagination, i.e. in 
the lower grades of the scale of visual imagination 
which Galton originally set up, the individual objects, 
when presented to the visual imagination, appear in 
a blurred and fragmentary way, so that only parts 
of them can be seen at once. Thus, for example, a 
decidedly poor visualiser may be able to picture at 
one time only the bowl of a silver spoon, or again 
only a part of its handle, but never the whole spoon 
at once. There remain a considerable number of 
persons, often of a high degree of intelligence and 
mental training, who have almost no visual images 
at all, and whose mental imagery is made up entirely 
of material belonging to other senses. 

It is difficult to get sufficiently exact returns from 
untrained people to estimate precisely the distribution 
of these various classes of persons in the community 



SENSITIVENESS — MENTAL IMAGERY I 55 

at large. On the whole, it appears that children, and 
young people generally, possess a better and richer 
visual imagination than the same people are likely 
to possess in middle life. It also appears that women 
possess a better visual imagination than men. The 
students of American institutions of learning appear 
on the whole to be better visualisers than the English 
men of science, of whose experiences Galton gives 
some account in his original study. How far the 
visual imagination can be trained, or prevented through 
training from fading away in middle life, is not yet 
known. There is some evidence that training has 
less effect upon the type of one's visual memory than 
some sanguine teachers are accustomed to suppose. 
At all events, there is considerable unlikelihood that 
a naturally poor visualiser can be turned into a very 
good one through training. 

The visual imagery is predominant over the imagery 
of the other senses in a very great number of people, and 
this fact accounts for a great deal of the usage of 
language when the imagination is in question. Those 
who prefer the visual images, seem, so to speak, to have 
had possession of the language ; so that the word " image," 
derived from visual experiences, is the only one at our dis- 
posal in the description of this type of mental processes; 
while the expressions concerning '* mental vision," "clear- 
ness of insight," and the rest, which are so common 
in popular language in describing mental imagery, 



156 OUTLINES OF PSYCFIOLOGY 

show that the experiences of the visuahsers have come 
to be treated as if they were the only characteristic 
types of mental imagery. But, as a fact, there exist 
images belonging to the sense of sound, and to the 
types of sensory experience, muscular, organic, etc., 
in terms of which we recall our movements. Images 
of the sense of smell have been declared by some 
psychologists to be very rare ; but there are indications 
in the reports of some collectors of facts which seem to 
point in the contrary direction, although it is obvious 
that such images are usually very subordinate. Images 
of taste appear most markedly in association with pres- 
ent sense perception, as when the sight of an apple 
known to be sour, or of vinegar, arouses the image of 
the sour taste. Yet in this case the taste image is 
probably much mingled with other forms of sensory 
experience. 

Two types of persons have come to be especially 
noted in the literature of the subject as those in whom 
some other form of sense imagery is more prominent 
than the visual imagery. These two types are (i) the 
auditory type, in whom images of sounds predominate ; 
and (2) the motor type, perhaps better to be called the 
verbal-motor type, in whom the predominant imagery 
takes the form of images of movement, together with 
images partly motor in type, but partly also auditory, 
of words. The third of these types seems to be, at least 
under modern conditions of training, and in middle life, 



SENSITIVENESS — MENTAL IMAGERY 157 

decidedly common, although also decidedly inferior in 
number to the more or less skilful visualisers whose 
visual imagery predominates in their own experience. 
The motor type image their world especially in terms 
either of the movements that they themselves tend to 
make in the presence of things, or, in particular, in terms 
of the words which they use in naming and in describ- 
ing things. Much less skilful than the good visualisers 
in seizing upon, and retaining the visible details of 
objects, they may be more skilful than some fairly 
good visualisers in forming precise ideas of the space 
relations of objects. In consequence, they are often 
skilful in noting those various more abstractly definable 
characters of things which can either be interpreted in 
terms of motor experience or fittingly described in words. 
§ 59. The relation of our mental imagery to the 
higher mental processes must be indicated in passing, 
even before we reach the study of mental docility. All 
our higher mental processes, in so far as they occur at 
any present moment, and in so far as they do not con- 
sist merely of sensory experiences and of feelings, must 
involve mental imagery. Whatever the mental signifi- 
cance of a thought, however far-reaching its scope, how- 
ever vast its meaning, it must, as a present thought, be 
embodied in a consciousness either of objects present to 
the senses or of objects present as images. The sen- 
sory experience and the imagery, of any moment, when 
taken together with the state of feeling of that moment, 



158 ■ OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

constitute the mental material of the moment ; and that, 
too, whether we are thinking of the loftiest or of the 
most trivial matters. The cultivation of the right men- 
tal imagery consequently constitutes a very important 
aspect of mental training. 

It is to be noted, however, that our current mental 
imagery is normally by no means independent, either 
of our sense perceptions, or of our motor reactions. 
When we are engaged in the ordinary processes of 
external perception, the sensory experiences and the 
images of the moment are usually very intimately 
associated, so as to appear closely welded together. 
So it is when the sight of an edged tool is associated 
with the images of a possible cut to be received from 
it, or when the perception of a tennis-racket arouses 
the motor images which have their origin in the move- 
ments made when one used it. Even those trains of 
images which the reading of a story arouses have a 
similar connection with the sense impressions made by 
the printed page as one reads ; and the trains of 
imagery which seem most independent of present 
sense perceptions (as in case of revery, when one 
stares into the fire or is in the dark) are still con- 
nected with the sense impressions produced by the 
firelight, or by the disturbances of the retinal field in 
the dark, or by organic sensory experiences. It follows 
that the training of the imagijiation cannot normally 
occur apart from a fitting training of the senses. For 



SENSITIVENESS — MENTAL IMAGERY 1 59 

not only are our imaginations, in general, due to re- 
vivals of the effects left by former sensory experiences, 
but the revival itself has relations to present sensory 
experience which we shall later mention in connection 
with mental docility. The lesson of these obvious con- 
siderations has been neglected by those who have en- 
deavoured to cultivate certain forms of abstract thought, 
or of religious imagination, or, in general, of meditation, 
apart from a due attention to the connection between 
normal images and normal present sense experiences. 

Less frequently noticed is the connection between sen- 
sory images and oitr motor response to our environment. 
This connection appears, with special evidence, in the 
case of our motor images themselves. When in pres- 
ence of familiar objects, such as our pen, our watch, 
our knife, our dictionary, or our bunch of keys, we 
examine the images that these objects awaken in us 
as we observe them, we may often find images of a 
more or less obviously motor type — images which take 
the form of tendencies to conceive to ourselves certain 
famihar acts which these objects call up in our minds. 
Thus the pen may arouse the image of grasping the 
pen for the purpose of writing, the knife may suggest 
cutting, and so on. Especially common is the presence 
of a word-image at the moment when we observe an 
object whose name we for any reason find it at all con- 
venient to recall. Such an image stands for the fact 
that we actually begin the motor reaction of naming 



l60 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the object. It is not, however, necessary that the 
images recalled in the presence of an object should be 
explicit motor images in order that they should be 
nevertheless related to the acts which the objects tend 
to arouse in us. At the sight of a steamboat that plies 
upon a lake or river known to me, I at once may be- 
gin to image, perhaps in visual form, scenes and other 
experiences that I have had as a tourist on that boat. 
But these images themselves very likely stand for a 
tendency now present in my consciousness to become 
again a voyager on the boat, and if I am at leisure, 
such images may erelong give place to the actual 
motor process of buying a ticket and going on board 
the boat. Furthermore, a vast number of images, vis- 
ual as well as motor, relate to our anticipations of 
future events. But these anticipations generally go along 
with tendeitcies to prepare for the future events by one 
or another sort of action. In brief, the whole normal life 
of our imagination has a most intimate connection to our 
conduct^ and should not be studied apart from conduct. 
The central processes which our images accompany 
form themselves a part of our reaction to our environ- 
ment, and our more organised series of mental images 
actually form part of our conduct. This aspect of the 
matter is one which many psychological studies of our 
mental imagery lead us altogether too much to neg- 
lect. And many teachers suppose that to train the 
imagination of children involves something quite dif- 



SENSITIVENESS— MENTAL IMAGERY l6l 

ferent from training their motor processes. But the 
normal imagination of healthy children is likely to get 
a rich expression in the form of their plays, of their 
dramatic impersonations, of their story-telling, and of 
their questions about things. And tJie most wholesome 
training of the imagiitation is properly to be carried out 
in connection with tJie training of condiict. 

As is seen from the foregoing, the term " imagina- 
tion " is most conveniently used as a name for the 
sum total of the mental processes that express them- 
selves in our mental imagery. When used psychologi- 
cally, the word ** imagination " conveys no implication 
that the mental imagery in question stands for unreal 
or for merely fantastic objects. All mental imagery 
results from former sensory experience. Why images 
arise in the order in which they do arise is a question 
whose answer belongs under the head of our Mental 
Docility. As a consequence of the general character 
of all our mental imagery, our images tend to be 
decidedly imperfect representatives of real objects, 
and may be very highly fantastic. But the estimate 
of the value of our images is an estimate founded very 
much more on the consideration of the sort of conduct 
which results from their presence, than from any direct 
estimate of their value as pictures of objects. Good 
imagery is that which leads us to correct opinions and 
to useful conduct, as well as to harmlessly agreeable 
and satisfactory states of consciousness in general. 



1 62 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

In training the imagination, a decided respect has 
to be paid to the varieties of types of mental images 
which have now been mentioned. The teacher who 
endeavours to train all pupils as if they were alike good 
visualisers, will indeed, in view of the fact that the 
good visualizers are numerous, obtain many successes. 
But he will be likely to regard as stupid those pupils 
who perhaps are defective only in the peculiar type of 
mental imagery which he asks them to use. There are 
some branches of early education, especially spelling, 
whose successful acquisition must to a considerable 
extent depend upon the choice, on the pupil's part, of 
the right sort of mental imagery for the retaining of 
the desired facts. What the right sort is, will depend 
upon whether such a pupil is rather of the visual, of 
the auditory, or of the motor type. For this will 
determine whether he most readily learns to spell by 
eye, by ear, or by means of the use of his tongue. In 
cases where the pupil himself finds difficulty in choosing 
the right imagery, the teacher may do well to take 
pains to discover something of what his type of 
imagination is, and direct his attention accordingly. 



CHAPTER VII 

Sensitiveness 

c. the feelings 

§ 60. We now come to that aspect of our mental 
sensitiveness which is the one most immediately inter- 
esting to ourselves, and also the one that, psychologi- 
cally speaking, still remains the most obscure. This 
is the aspect which is sometimes known by the name 
of the Feelings. Owing to the ambiguous way in 
which the word " feeling " is used in popular language, 
some psychologists have preferred to speak of the 
" affective aspect " of our mental life. The term "affec- 
tion," used in a technical sense, has also been employed 
for this aspect of our mental life. In speaking, in 
our introduction, of the signs of mental life, we have 
already called attention to the aspect of consciousness 
which is here in question. It is the aspect which 
becomes extremely prominent in case of very notable 
pleasures or pains due to our sense experience. It is 
the aspect also very marked in all our emotional life. 
It is also the aspect upon which our immediate sense 
of the present worth or value of our conscious states 
as they appear to ourselves must always rest. 

163 



l64 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

It is plain that this aspect of our consciousness has 
a very close relation to our activities, since both the 
attainment of pleasant or of satisfactory feelings, and 
the avoidance of painful states, constitute important 
factors in the determination of our conduct. Those 
who divide mental life, in the well-known traditional 
way, into the life of cognition, the life of feeling, and 
the life of will, are accustomed to assign to the feelings 
a stage intermediate between the life of cognition and 
the life of will. From this point of view our cognitive 
consciousness first furnishes to us facts. In terms of 
our feelings we estimate the valttes of these facts for 
us. In view of these values our acts are determined. 
That this traditional view has a real significance can- 
not be questioned. But in the present exposition of 
the structure and laws of consciousness we are not at all 
closely following the lines of the traditional exposition. 

From our present point of view all consciousness 
without exception may be considered as accompanying 
our acts, or at all events as taking place side by side 
with the tendencies to actiojt, which are at any moment 
aroused within our organism. And thus all conscious- 
ness ivithout exception might be considered as a7i expres- 
sion of the willy since that of which we are aware is 
always related, in our own minds, to some tendency 
on our part to act thus or thus. Furthermore, in so 
far as our consciousness is an expression of our sensi- 
tiveness to the disturbances which the environment pro- 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 165 

duces, oitr whole conscioiisness has a cognitive aspect. 
And since our consciousness is related, as we shall 
later see, not only to the present state, but to the 
acquired habits of our organism, or in other words is 
a result of our docility, our consciousness has no vol- 
untary aspect that is not also in some respects a cognitive 
aspect. Since the feelijigs form a part of a consciottsness 
which is thus always more or less obviously both cogni- 
tive and volitional, the feelings can hardly be regarded 
as a link binding together two relatively distinct phases 
of consciousness, namely, the cognitive and the volun- 
tary. For us, in this discussion, the feelings, in so far 
as they are present, are phases of our present mental 
sensitiveness. In what sense they have a cognitive 
significance we can better see in a later portion of 
our discussion. Their volitional significance will also 
come to light more clearly in later connections. We 
are concerned with them at present in so far as they 
stand side by side with our sensory experiences, as an 
aspect of our present conscious response to the situation 
in which at any moment we find ourselves. 

§ 61. In view of our attitude toward the doctrine 
of mental elements, it is no part of our present task 
to look for elementary feelings, and to give a catalogue 
of these before showing how they, in connection with 
other elements, enter into our more complex conscious 
life. While some of the feelings can be more or less 
definitely isolated by means of psychological experi- 



1 66 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ment, the motives that make a catalogue of the sen- 
sations a convenient preliminary to the study of the 
sensory side of our present consciousness- do not exist, 
in the present state of experimental psychology, in 
nearly the same degree, in case of the affective aspect 
of consciousness. For the isolated feelings that can 
be produced, — not, indeed, in absolute isolation, but in 
connection with certain simple sense experiences, such 
as odours, tastes, and sounds, — for the purposes of ex- 
perimental observation, form but a small portion of 
our affective Hfe, and do not, as in case of the sensa- 
tions, furnish to us anywhere nearly an exhaustive 
list of the qualities of feelings which our ordinary ex- 
perience seems to furnish. On the whole we are there- 
fore still forced to accept, in the case of the feelings, 
accounts and analyses which are but very imperfectly 
subjected to experimental control. 

Our ordinary consciousness very frequently distin- 
guishes within its own unity, between the facts of 
which we are aware, and the present vahte that these 
facts seem to us to possess. This present value, for 
instance, — the pleasurable or painful character of a 
sound, or of a sensory experience of touch, — we learn 
to refer, in our ordinary life, to the relation of the object 
to ourselves. My suffering does not belong to the 
character of the object that touches or burns my skin ; 
but as I am accustomed to say to myself, " It is my 
suffering, it exists alone in me." Thus my sensory ex- 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 67 

periences, as such, tend to be referred to objects, the 
things of the world which cause them, while my feel- 
ings appear to me to be my own. This aspect of the 
distinction between feelings and other experiences 
can be fully justified and described only on the basis 
of a theory of what I mean by myself. And such a 
theory cannot be assumed at the outset of psychology 
as a means of furnishing a sufificient account of the 
true nature of feeling. Yet it is an important feature 
of the feelings that, when we have once developed our 
notion of the difference between the self and the 
world, we refer feelings especially to the self rather 
than to the world witJioitt the self. This " subjective " 
character of feeling is used by many psychologists as 
a means of defining its essential nature. 

§ 62. If we look for a simpler criterion of what we 
mean by feeling, it seems worth while to point out 
that by feeling, we mean simply our prese?zt sensitiveness 
to the values of tilings in so far as these values are 
directly present to consciousness. My feelings do not 
assure me of what the ethical, or the scientific, or the 
otherwise remote value of an object may be. But as 
they pass, my feelings tell me what is the seeming pres- 
ent value of this state of conscio?isness, or of this com- 
plex of states of consciousness, as the contents of 
consciousness pass before me. The question. What 
aspects of feelings, or of zvhat kinds of feelings exist f 
therefore reduces itself to the question, In what way 



1 68 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

do our states of consciousness seem to us, as they pass, 
to possess a present and immediate value ? The usual 
answer to this question in the psychological text-books 
is, that the present values of our conscious states, the 
present kinds of feelings, can be reduced to two opposed 
kinds, either one of which may predominate, or be 
alone present, as the one immediate value of a passing 
state, at any present moment. The two types of feel- 
ing in question are often called Pleasure and Pain, 
or again the Agreeable and the Disagreeable, or 
again Pleasure and Displeasure, or the Pleasant and the 
Unpleasant. It is often said that only feelings of these 
two kinds exist. The further question whether there 
exist, under each of these kinds, subordinate types (for 
example whether there exist pleasures of various kinds 
which cannot be reduced one to another), is a question 
about which great difference of opinion has existed. 
The well-known theory thus defined denies, however, in 
any case, the existence of any other essentially differ- 
ent kinds of feelings except those of pleasure and of 
displeasure. 

This theory seems at first to meet with a very obvious 
obstacle, so soon as an effort is made to apply it to the 
case of our more highly complicated affective states, 
such as our moods, our emotions, and our passions. 
But here, in many modern text-books, the already con- 
sidered theory that our consciousness is composed of 
mental elements, in connection with a certain result of 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 69 

the habits of introspective analysis which experimental 
psychology has trained, comes to the aid of the partisan 
of the pleasure-pain theory of the feelings. Our emo- 
tions, viz., when carefully studied, prove to be, in large 
measure, sensory experiences. By analysis we become 
more or less able to substitute for a complex emotional 
condition an analysed mental state, or a series of such 
states, wherein we take note of the sensory elements 
that, as the usual theory insists, are present in our 
ordinary and unanalysed emotions. For such a view, 
an emotion consists of elements due to organic sensations, 
these elements being joined very closely zvith a vast com- 
plex of elements of the pleasure-pain type. Thus, in case 
of anger we have complexes of sensations due to the 
organic excitement which accompanies the emotion — 
sensations of choking in the throat, sensations of the 
violent beating of the heart, sensations due to the ac- 
tive movements which express anger, etc. It is said 
that, if we abstract from our ideas of the object which 
arouses our anger, and from these various masses of 
organic sensory experience, there remains in the emo- 
tions, as the aspect constituting our present sense of the 
value of our state, only the pleasure-pain aspect. Anger 
is very generally a painful emotion. Some stages of it, 
however, may be relatively pleasant. Similar analyses, 
it is asserted, will hold true of such emotions as fear, 
love, joy, or of the relatively placid moods such as ac- 
company our unexcited mental condition. Thus there 



I/O OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

would remain, as the essential kinds of feeling, pleasure 
and pain. 

In order to complete the general statement of the 
analysis of feehng thus attempted, it remains only to 
note the fact that the v/ord " pain," as used in ordinary 
language, is somewhat ambiguous. It is very often 
used to name certain sensations, which have already 
been mentioned in our catalogue of the elementary 
sensory experiences. It is also used to name the pain- 
ful, i.e. the unpleasant or disagreeable feelings. Now 
in many of our more ideal sorrows, and in many of the 
feelings associated even with our direct sensory experi- 
ences, there is no kind of sensation of pain. On the 
other hand, the sufferings due to an intestinal disorder, 
or to a burn, have a close connection with sensations of 
pain, or with sensory experiences, that, from the point 
of view of the usual theory, are complexes of such sen- 
sations. When a disagreeable combination of colours, or 
an otherwise offensive object of decorative art, gives us 
displeasure, the sensations present, or the sensory ex- 
periences, are of a totally different character from those 
present when we are aware of a burn or of an intestinal 
suffering. There are no sensations of pain amongst the 
purely visual experiences. But the intestinal suffering 
and the burn agree with the disagreeable aesthetic 
experience in so far as painful, i.e. unpleasant feeling 
enters into both, i.e. in so far as both are more or less 
intolerable to us. In the same way an ideal sorrow 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 171 

is disagreeable, but it is not necessarily accompanied 
with any sensations of pain. If once the ambiguity 
in the use of the word " pain " is detected, and the word 
is used as the name for unpleasant feelmgs, not as the 
name for painful sensory experiences, the theory here 
in question receives a statement which avoids all unnec- 
essary misunderstanding. 

As regards that aspect of the theory thus stated 
which involves the doctrine that consciousness is com- 
posed of simple elements, we of course need here make 
no new comments. For our present purpose the issue 
is, tvhether the aspects which give oiu'- consciousness its 
present and passing value are sufficiently described by 
classifying them into two kinds, and whether these two 
kinds are sufficiently characterised by the names Pleas- 
ure and Pain, or by the somewhat less ambiguous 
names. Agreeable and Disagreeable, or Pleasant and 
Unpleasant. 

§ 63. It will be noticed in any case that the feelings, 
as thus characterised, are divided into two ajitagonistic 
groups. Whether we can at once be conscious of the 
presence of agreeable and disagreeable objects, i.e. 
whether we can at once enjoy and suffer, or find our 
present state agreeable and disagreeable (as Juliet 
seems to -do when she calls parting " such sweet sor- 
row "), this is a question concerning which opinions 
somewhat differ. But nobody can doubt that there is a 
distinct opposition between our sense of the agreeable 



172 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

and our sense of the disagreeable, so that, in so far as 
we tend to iind something disagreeable, we at least tend 
to exclude finding it then and there agreeable. In other ;:| 
words, pleasure and pain, as antagonistic values, te^td to 
excbide each the other. The feelings thus have a char- 
acter which does not to any similar extent belong to the 
sensory experiences. Colours are not antagonistic to 
sounds. And both are consistent with experiences of 
touch and of movement. But pleasures war with pains, 
and where one conquers the other is abolished. 

And now according to the theory here in question, 
the same also holds true as to the relation of the feelings 
to our voluntary actions. Pleasure, it is said, necessarily 
attracts us, so that we tend to get more of it. Painful 
feeling repels tis, so that we tend, in so far as possible, 
to remove its cause from consciousness or from exist- 
ence, so that the pain may cease. The two sorts of 
antagonistic feelings are thus connected zvith antagonistic 
tendeticies of action. And as there are only two kinds 
of feeling, so there are also only two antagonistic sorts 
of action, — the sort of action by which we seek to ap- 
proach, to retain, to get more of an object, and the sort 
of action by which we seek to get away from an object, 
or to destroy it. In brief, we desire the pleasurable, 
we show aversion toward the painful. 

And finally, as this theory insists, pleasurable and 
painful states of consciousness are respectively associ- 
ated with antagonistic organic conditions. Where 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 73 

pleasurable feeling is found, the organism shows vari- 
ous signs of present heightened vitality. There is an 
expansiveness and a vigour about the whole life which is 
absent in case of painful emotion. On the other hand, 
in painful emotion, the organism tends to contract in 
various ways, to " shrink," and, in the long run, shows 
signs of lowered vitality. Thus facts relating to our 
actions, as well as those relating to our organic conditions, 
tend to support the dual theory of the life of the feelings, 
§ 64. Nevertheless, after all this has been said, it 
remains true that there is a great deal about the com- 
plex life of the feehngs which seems to render doubtful 
the sufficiency of the foregoing dual theory. For one 
thing, we are frequently conscious of an attitude toward 
objects which seems to give them at once more than one 
kind of value, and which determines value in other than 
pleasure-pain terms. Thus, we may find a situation 
painful, and yet be in a state of feeling which renders 
us decidedly averse to altering what is essential to the 
situation, even for the sake of escaping the pain. For 
instance, the sulky child, although suffering the pangs 
of its mood, may decline to accept comfort, apparently 
because it finds the pain somehow fascinating. On a 
far higher level, the mourner may refuse a proffered 
and comforting distraction, because he finds his sorrow 
for some reason preferable to a cheer that he all the 
while knows to be possible. The athlete, the military, 
and the moral hero may all of them agree in choosing a 



174 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

situation which involves suffering, although they dislike 
the suffering. For they find this very suffering itself in 
some wise also fascinating. 

In order to explain such cases of complex feeling, 
the dual theory of the two antagonistic types of feeling 
finds it necessary, either to suppose that pleasure and 
pain are mixed at the same moment, and that the 
pleasurableness of the experience which attracts us, 
despite its painfulness, predominates over the painful- 
ness itself ; or else to assert that pleasurable and pain- 
ful aspects of a situation, or of an object, are alternately 
presented to our consciousness, in such wise that we 
sometimes find agreeable what at other moments we 
find disagreeable; while, in case of the fascinating 
sorrows, the pleasurable feelings that we obtain prove 
to be more effective in directing our action or our 
attention than the intervening sufferings. 

But to both these ways of explaining the so-called 
mixed feelings some objection naturally arises. That 
the pleasurable and painful aspects of the fascinating 
but miserable experience merely alternate in conscious- 
ness seems hardly to be verified by introspection. For 
here the whole weight of the evidence furnished by the 
literature of sorrow, by the poets, the autobiographers, 
and the other confessors of human experience, who 
have brooded over such conditions as these, and have 
reported them, seems to be in favour of the view that the 
mixed feelings offer instances of actual conflict, within 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 75 

the conscioit-s field, betzvcen opposed feelings. Such con- 
flict is reported by the most various observers, even in 
cases where those who report find the conflict inexplica- 
ble, and think that it ought not to exist. On the other 
hand, granting that various conflicting feelings can 
at once be found present in the same consciousness, it 
seems somewhat difficult to accept the view that the 
only antagonism present is that between the pleasurable 
and the painful aspects of the object of consciousness. 
For the one who reports such conflict is likely to say 
that what he finds attractive, he also finds painful, or 
that what he delights in, that he also in some fashion, 
and at the same time, abhors and despises. But that 
the one aspect is in such wise opposed to the other, 
that the one simply tends to annul the other, is often 
not reported. One is very conscious of being pulled in 
various ways at once, rather than of the fact that his 
conscious account has, so to speak, two opposed sides 
that tend to balance each other. For the rest, we 
should expect pleasure and pain, if present together in 
equal intensity, to come to consciousness as values op- 
posed in such wise that the sum of the two equal and 
opposite values would be nothing at all. But the report 
generally is that the opposing values present are so to 
speak incommensurate, so that the sense in which the 
experience is pleasurable is simply not the sense in 
which it is at the same titne abhorrent. The account 
consequently suggests that the terms "pleasure" and 



176 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

" pain " may be made by the theory now in question to 
cover tendencies of feeling which are really not of two 
kinds only, but of more than two. 

§ 65. In decidedly recent psychology, the great ex- 
perimental psychologist and philosopher, Wundt, has 
been led, not indeed upon the basis of such general 
considerations as this, but upon the basis of experi- 
mental investigations (pursued in his own laboratory), 
to a theory of the types of feeling which he still ad- 
vances in a somewhat tentative fashion, but which 
promises to throw a very considerable light upon the 
complex facts of feeling. According to Wundt, the 
feelings, which he views, in accordance with the theory 
of mental elements, as consisting of a vast number of 
different elementary states, yi^rm a complex whose facts 
vary in three differ ettt ^^ directions!' One feeling may 
differ from another according to its place in a series 
whose members differ according to any one of these 
"directions," or according to all three at once. The 
three directions are those : first, of the pleasure-pain or 
pleasant-unpleasant series; second, of a series which 
Wundt calls the "excitement-depression series," and 
third, of the "tension-relief series." There are some 
feelings whose place is in a single one of these series 
almost wholly. Thus there are feelings of pleasure 
and pain purely, which have no place in the other 
series. Again, there are feelings of excitement and of 
depression which are neither pleasurable nor painful. 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 77 

Finally, there are feelings of tension and relief which 
have hardly any trace of the two other characters. But 
many feelings, even very elementary ones, have, accord- 
ing to Wundt, two or all three of these characters 
at once. 

In view of the facts which constitute Wundt's admit- 
tedly still incomplete evidence for his three " directions " 
of feelings, and in view of the really very large body of 
inexact but impressive evidence on the subject which 
the literature of the emotions seems to contain, I am 
disposed to regard it as decidedly improbable that the 
dual theory of the feelings gives an adequate account 
of the phenomena. On the other hand, there can be no 
doubt of the great difficulty which exists in distinguish- 
ing, in introspective analysis, between the aspects of 
sensory experience which any complex state of feeling 
accompanies, and this state of feeling itself; so that 
we have indeed to admit that almost any account of the 
feelings which seeks to differentiate them from the 
sensory experiences is at present open to the objection 
that it confuses these two aspects of our mental life 
whenever it goes beyond the dual theory in its account 
of the feelings. 

§ 66. Nevertheless, it seems worth while to attempt, 
in the present connection, a tentative view of the nature 
of tJie feeli^igs — a view which shall try to be just to 
the classes of facts that the literature of the emotions, 
and the experiments of Wundt seem, in very different 



1/8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ways, to emphasise. I venture, then, to advance the 
hypothesis that our feehngs differ from one another 
in at least two decidedly distijict and relatively indepen- 
dent ways, while I am uncertain whether Wundt's three 
dimensions, or some still more complex account, may 
not prove in the end to be more acceptable. I limit 
my hypothesis to two relatively independent " dimen- 
sions" of feeling, only because at least so much varia- 
tion seems very probable, while more " dimensions " 
seem less probable. In each of these two ways in 
which feelings can differ, I find mutually opposed 
kinds, or antagonistic characters of feeling. First, 
then, feelings differ as to tJieir pleasantness and un- 
pleasantness. In so far we have the pleasure-pain 
dimension, as it might be called, of the variation of the 
feelings. At the same time the feelings differ as being 
more or less either feelings of restlessness or feelings of 
quiescence. By restlessness and quiescence I mean a 
sort of antagonism introspectively easy to observe, but 
on the other hand rather easily confounded (as I 
readily admit) with those aspects of sensory experience 
which guides us in knowing what movements we are 
making. By a feeling of restlessness I mean, however, 
not the sensory experience of movements that we are 
actually carrying out, but the feeling of that value of our 
experience which makes it an object of momentary dis- 
content. By a feeling of quiescence, on the other hand, 
I do not mean exclusively such a feeling as is associated 



SENSITIVENESS— THE FEELINGS 1 79 

with the word " contentment " when that word is op- 
posed to the word " discontent," because by the word 
"contentment" language has come to mean a feeling of 
quiescence which is also one of pleasure ; while feel- 
ings of quiescence, as I shall point out in a moment, 
may be relatively painful. The word " quiescence " 
does, however, fairly express my meaning. I shall now 
illustrate the ways in which, as I maintain, feelings can 
vary in eitJier one of these two dimensions, or types of 
variation, in such fashion that instead of two, there will 
be at least four principal kinds of mixed feeling present 
in various states of consciousness, as well as two pairs 
of mutually antagonistic, unmixed forms of feeling 
possible. 

§ ^J. First, then, to call attention afresh to Pleasure 
and Displeasure. Pleasures are feelings that seem to 
accompany states in which the organism is being, so 
to speak, btnlt up, or prevailingly refreshed, so that its 
vitality is for the moment heightened. Pain or dis- 
pleasure, on the other hand, is such feeling as is pre- 
dominant at moments when the organism is breaking 
down, or is being lowered in vitality. In so far, pleas- 
ure and displeasure tend to reflect a condition of the 
organism as a whole, although at any moment they 
may, in my opinion, be more or less mixed, just be- 
cause the processes that have to do with increase and 
decrease of vitality are so complex, and are so im- 
perfectly represented in consciousness. Meanwhile, 



l80 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

pleasure and displeasure, when they appear, are aspects 
or qualities of conscious states in so far as they are now 
present^ and not in so far as our consciousness emphasises 
the changes which are constantly going on in the conscious 
field. 

On the other hand, restlessness and quiescence are 
sorts of feeling that have to do with our consciousness, 
not of any particular movements, bitt of the general ten- 
dejicy to a change in the m,otor processes present in our 
organism. In consciousness itself these feelings there- 
fore have to do with tlie chajiging or temporal aspects 
of our conscious states} We tend on the whole to 
regard with restlessness whatever tendency involves 
our interest in immediately future changes. The emo- 
tions of expectation, of curiosity, of fear, of hope, of 
suspense, are accordingly especially coloured by rest- 
less feelings. On the other hand, the feehngs of 
quiescence predominate when no change is notably 
interesting to us, or when no conscious stress is 
laid upon the changes that are occurring. In con- 
sequence, we regard the past, when we look back to 
it, with a quiescence which we do not generally adopt 
toward the future. The complex mood called "fatal- 
ism " is one in which all happenings, both past and 
future, are regarded with a predominance of those 

1 A similar reference of the feelings of excitement and depression, and 
of tension and relief, to the temporal aspect of consciousness, appears 
in Wundt's theory. 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS l8l 

quiescent feelings that usually predominate when we 
think of the past. Hence the fatalist views the future 
as having the same value for his feelings that the 
irrevocable past already has. Again, quiescent feelings 
predominate both when we approach sleep, and when 
we suffer from marked and long-continued physical 
depression. On the other 'hand, restless feelings pre- 
dominate when we are wide awake, or when the stored 
energies of the organism are in a condition which dis- 
poses them to rapid and vigorous discharge. What 
is commonly called active attention, as when we listen 
intently for a faint sound, is characterised by feelings 
of restlessness. On the other hand, the so-called pas- 
sive states of one who helplessly observes a present 
object is characterised by a predominance of quiescent 
feelings. 

The restless and the quiescent feelings may, and in 
general do, coloitr particular sensory experiences. That 
is, we may be prominently conscious of the sensory 
experience, and of what it means, and may, at the 
same time, be aware of its value as one which arouses 
us to restless activity, or which leaves us quiescent. 
On the other hand, it seems to me an inadequate state- 
ment to identify our feeling of restlessness with the 
sensory experience that informs us of what movement 
we are making at a moment when we are active. We 
are restless in so far as tve are actively dissatisfied with 
a present experience, and are so disposed to change the 



1 82 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

experience. The result of this dissatisfaction will in 
general be a consciousness of movement. While the 
movement is going on, every stage of it will be some- 
what unsatisfactory, and our consciousness will be 
one of restlessness. But our cotisciousness that we are 
moving is a sensory experience. Our conscioitsness that 
we all the while feel restless, or disposed to move, con- 
stitutes the feeling here in question. This feeling 
makes us aware of the value of our present state, 
which in case of restlessness is a value that we desire 
momentarily to change. 

§ 68. And now for the relation between the pleasure- 
pain dimension of the feelings and the second dimen- 
sion, that of restlessness and quiescence. It is true 
that, as the customary view says, we never wholly 
" acquiesce " in presence of pain or of the disagreeable. 
On the other hand, there are sufferings which leave us 
relatively quiescent, while there are sufferings which 
are accompanied with vigorous restlessness. When a 
physical pain begins, we are restless, and our feelings 
include those usually called rebellious. After hours of 
suffering, we may remain still as clearly conscious of 
the pain as ever, and quite as ready as ever to call it 
intolerable. That is, our unpleasant feeling is as 
notable as ever. But we may find ourselves very 
much less disposed to any present tendency to change 
our situation. We then fall into the state of passive 
suffering. We even feel that we coidd not do anything. 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 83 

that we have no tendency to strive against the pain. 
In this case, we combine suffering with quiescence of 
feeling. The emotion called "despair" is a classic 
instance of such an union of unpleasant feeling with 
predominantly quiescent feeling. Various classes of 
nervous sufferers confess such an union of pain and 
quiescence as something which they themselves find 
puzzling. The apathetic stages of nervous exhaustion 
may furnish instances of what the patient describes as 
great suffering, but as misery against which he has no 
conscious tendency to contend. 

On the other hand, pleasure may be of the restless 
type. In this case, although we like what we have, we 
aj'e dissatisfied with the situation, and restlessly seek for 
more. In active temperaments and states of mind this 
character of pleasant feelings becomes very prominent ; 
hence those observations of the dissatisfying character 
of the pleasures which are found so richly scattered 
through the writings of poets and moralists. They 
rest, I think, upon the basis of a sound introspection. 
But the ordinary dual theory of the feelings offers no 
sufficient account of their significance. Goethe's Faust 
makes a wager with the Devil which is substantially to 
the effect that Faust is ready to give up his soul to the 
adversary, whenever the latter can furnish to him a 
satisfying pleasure, i.e. a pleasure that he desires to 
keep at the very moment when he has it. The signal 
that this result has been reached is to be furnished, 



l84 OUTLINES .OF PSYCHOLOGY 

according to the terms of the wager, whenever Faust 
is ready to say to the present moment : — ^ 

" O moment, stay, thou art so fair." 

As a fact, the Devil leads Faust through the entire 
round of sense pleasures and worldly felicities, without 
being able to get this report from the hero, until a 
situation is reached, in the closing scene of Faust's life, 
which does not here concern us. 

But from the psychological point of view, it is indeed 
possible that pleasure should be associated with a rela- 
tively, although never absolutely, perfect feeling of 
quiescence. In this case the pleasure is of the kind that 
satisfies. The conscious attitude is then one, not of 
seeking for more pleasure, but of desiring nothing more, 
and nothing other than what we have. The attainment 
of this state is indeed never complete, but constitutes 
an ideal limit of our conscious search for pleasure. 

§ 69. The relation of pleasure and displeasure, and 
of restlessness and quiescence, to consciousness in 
general, is somewhat different. The painful is capable 
of coming very prominently and very intensely to 
consciousness. Seldom does pleasure compare in its 
intensity with the degree of consciousness which the 
unpleasant often attains. On the other hand, there is 
nothing in the nature of pleasure which forbids our 
being decidedly and intensely conscious of its presence. 
Restlessness, however, is distinctly more capable of 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 85 

becoming intense in consciousness than is quiescence. 
The feeling of quiescence, or the tendency in our feel- 
ings which I intend to characterise by the word, can 
indeed be present to consciousness ; but, on the whole, 
quiescence never becomes entirely complete so long as 
consciousness persists. It might be objected to my 
whole account that quiescence means rather the ab- 
sence of disquiet, or of restlessness, than the presence 
of any positive character of feeling. But while I admit 
that restlessness is a much more positive experience 
than is any extreme form of quiescence, there still 
seems to me ground for regarding quiescence as a posi- 
tive state of feeling. But that restlessness is decidedly 
distinct from painfulness or from unpleasantness seems 
to me to be illustrated by the foregoing instances ; 
while the positive character of the experience of quies- 
cence seems to me to be at least probable, and to be 
distinct from the character which we associate with the 
name Pleasurable. 

§ 70. From the point of view now advanced there 
would therefore be at least possible four distinct kinds of 
mixed feelings, due to the union of the two pairs of char- 
acters, or of the two dimensions of feelings now defined. 
These four kinds would be : First, the pleasures that 
are quiescent. These would be illustrated, especially, 
by instances of what is usually called contentment, as 
opposed to discontent. The quiescent pleasures would 
again be the most distinctly satisfactory sorts of feeling 



1 86 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

that we possess, so far as the judgment of the present 
moment is concerned. On the other hand, the tendency 
of quiescence to be associated with a diminution of con- 
scious intensity is responsible for the fact that the 
pleasures which tend to content us are in general not 
very prominent or intense experiences, and are there- 
fore regarded with a certain restless contempt by 
active-minded people, who do not often possess such 
experiences, and who, viewing them from without, find 
them indeed morally unsatisfactory, or tame, as Goethe 
and his Faust do find them. 

Second, we find the dissatisfying pleasures. These 
have the present character of being pleasant. On the 
other hand they are distinctly unsatisfactory. As we 
have already pointed out, the dual theory of the feelings 
finds it very difficult to assign to them a definite place. 
If pleasure is the state of feeling that we desire, and if 
we have it, why are we not satisfied with it .-" But such 
discontent is the well-known, and in fact the normal, 
experience of human nature with regard to tnost pleas- 
ures. As Faust says : — 

" So in desire I hasten to enjoyment, 
And in enjoyment pine to feel desire." 

From our point of view such mixed states become 
natural enough. The pleasw'ably restless feeling in- 
volves, in any case, dissatisfaction with the pleasure 
so far as that is merely present. Our desires in such 
cases, when defined in terms of ideas (that is, when our 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 87 

consciousness is not merely of our feelings but of our 
thoughts and our objects), may be either desires for 
other pleasures of a different kind, or desires for more 
of the same kind of pleasure, or may sometimes involve 
a discontent which prefers even painful experiences 
to the present pleasures, simply because the painful 
experiences will give an opportunity for the exertion of 
those activities which our restless feelings demand. 
Wagner's Tannhauser, at the point where he is about 
to attempt escape from the Venusberg, experiences such 
an union of restlessness with pleasure. Browning's hero, 
who expresses — 

" The need of a world of men for me," 

is similarly dissatisfied with the enjoyments whose pres- 
ence he still experiences. 

The biological importance of this union of pleasure 
and dissatisfaction is very great. The normal animal, 
engaged in successful activity, experiences many states 
of consciousness that accompany heightened vitality 
and that' are accordingly pleasurable. But since its 
relations to its environment need constantly fresh read- 
justment, such an animal must feel not merely the pleas- 
ure, but the incompleteness of its present state, in order 
that it may constantly desire such readjustment. 

Third, we find in many feelings the tmion of the pain- 
ful and the restless. Our experience is painful in so 
far as it accompanies a certain present diminution of 



1 88 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the energy at the disposal of the organism, or in so far 
as the present situation is more or less injurious to the 
organism. Such pain is, in so far, very naturally 
accompanied with dissatisfaction. But since dissatis- 
faction can accompany pleasure without thereby neces- 
sarily involving the distinctly painful feeling, we must 
indeed distinguish between the restlessness that accom- 
panies suffering and the siffering itself. If the organic 
injury to which the suffering is due is present, but is 
not very severe, the restlessness may predominate over 
the suffering. In all sucJl cases, according to our 
account, the feeling present has two distinct aspects, 
namely, our sense of the present pain, and our feeling 
of the restless tendency to change our situation. The 
dual theory of the feelings regards this connection be- 
tween pain and restlessness as an inevitable one; and 
distinguishes the one from the other only by calling 
the pain a quality of the present state, and the restless- 
ness, perhaps, a sensory experience of the movements 
that we make in order to escape from the pain. Our 
own theory regards the restlessness and the pain as 
distinguishable aspects, both of which belong to the 
world of the feelings, and neither of which is wholly 
dependent upon the other. 

Fourth, we may have, in certain feelings, the union 
of suffering and quiescence. As already admitted, this 
quiescence is never an absolute indisposition to make 
any change whatever. On the other hand, the quies- 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS 1 89 

cent aspect of consciousness seems to me to have a 
positive character, which is distinctly illustrated by all 
those experiences to which Wundt gives the names 
Feelings of Depression and Feelings of Relief. That 
feelings of the relatively quiescent sort can be associ- 
ated even with great suffering seems to be illustrated 
by the emotion of despair, and by our passive accept- 
ance of the hopeless sorrow, or of the overwhelming 
physical pain. Very great and long-continued pain 
inevitably tends to bring about a state in which feel- 
ings of quiescence are prominent. 

§ 71. If the foregoing are the four kinds of possible 
mixtures of the two types of feelings, it may be indeed 
also pointed out that we have feelings in which one of 
the two types of variation here in question may so pre- 
dominate that the other of the dimensioits of feeling almost 
wholly vanishes. Such feelings, in so far as pleasures 
and pains are concerned, have been especially noted 
in experimental work in the laboratory. Disagreeable 
tastes, experimentally and unexpectedly produced by 
stimuli put into the mouth of a passive subject, may 
be for a moment almost purely disagreeable; pleasant 
tastes may be almost purely agreeable ; and in both 
cases there may be comparatively little prominence 
given to the other dimension of feeling. Yet, on the 
whole, such experiences of the unpleasant, if not very 
intense, will be in general associated rather with feel- 
ings of quiescence than with those of restlessness, just 



1 90 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

in SO far as the subject remains passive. On the other 
hand, feelings of restlessness and of quiescence can be 
obtained in various degrees with little mixture of pleas- 
antness and unpleasantness. TJds especially occurs in 
case of the phenoiitena of zvJiat are called active and pas- 
sive attention to indifferent objects. By the phrase " in- 
different objects," the customary dual theory of the 
feelings distinguishes those objects that seem to us at 
any moment neither pleasurable nor painful. Such, it is 
usually said, are the vast number of objects of our 
colder " intellectual " concern. Such, in general, are 
all very familiar objects, of whose presence we may 
take note, while their character as pleasant or un- 
pleasant is almost if not altogether absent. But we 
may, and constantly do, attend to such objects. If we 
attend to them in what is called the passive way, they 
become clear and prominent in our consciousness with- 
out any effort of our own. If we attend to them with 
some effort, they become prominent, but not without 
thereby obtaining some sort of present and relatively 
active interest to us. From our point of view, attention 
to such ^^indifferent objects^' whether it be active or 
passive attention, involves processes ijtto which feeling 
enters. The feeling is one of quiescence in passive atten- 
tion, of restlessness in active attention. The moods of 
intellectual interest, the feelings which accompany our 
questions and determine our curiosity, are feelings in 
which restlessness is prominent, and in which we are 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS I9I 

therefore dissatisfied with the imperfect knowledge that 
we get so long as our insight is incomplete. But feel- 
ings of pleasantness and unpleasantness may be, in 
such cases, almost wholly absent however active our 
attention is. 

It is notable that, as the ordinary theory admits, 
our active attention may also be awakened, either by 
pleasant or by unpleasant objects. The fact that both 
pleasantness and unpleasantness may thus agree in con- 
stituting stimuli for our active attention, while neverthe- 
less the difference between attention and inattention 
seems to be one that is largely determined by feel- 
ing — this fact involves a problem which the ordinary 
dual theory of the feelings leaves unexplained. If 
both pleasure and displeasure tend to make us actively 
attend, what kind of feeling is it that makes us in- 
attentive .'' From our point of view, the explanation 
lies in the fact that active attention involves feelings 
of restlessness, while feelings of quiescence tend to 
the cessation of active attention. Thus, both pleasur- 
able and painful objects may awaken our active atten- 
tion, because both may arouse feelings of restlessness. 
In case active attention succeeds in bringing the state 
of knowledge which we desire, the result is a feeling 
of quiescence which once more leads to the cessa- 
tion of active attention, and consequently to that 
which, apart from passive attention, would constitute 
the state of inattention. 



192 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

§ ^2. We have now considered those aspects of our 
consciousness which are especially concerned in the 
sensitiveness to its present surroundings that the mind 
manifests at any moment. In considering the stream 
of consciousness, we already saw one of the principal 
characteristics of what is called our present Attention 
to a portion of the states of consciousness that at 
any moment float before us. In the narrow field of 
the present passing moment, some states are empha- 
sised, or are clear, while the rest of the passing states 
constitute what is often called the background of con- 
sciousness. The states present, whether they are in 
the background or not, are of three principal kinds, 
Sensory Experiences, Images, Feelings. These states 
are not a mere collection of separate facts. Still less 
are they, when they ordinarily occur, composed of 
the elements that analysis can discover in those 
analysed mental states which, as a result of special 
training and of experiment, can be substituted for 
the states of our naive consciousness. On the con- 
trary, consciousness as it passes always involves Unity, 
and within this unity finds a certain Variety then 
and there distinguished. The unity and the variety 
are inseparable aspects of the conscious life of any 
moment. Neither can be resolved into the other. 
And at each moment there exist only such unity and 
such variety as is then and there observed. When 
we consider the conditions upon which the conscious- 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS I93 

ness of the instant depends, we are able to refer one 
aspect of all our conscious life to the present activi- 
ties of our sense organs. And this aspect we have 
called our present sensory experience. A similar 
study of the conditions of consciousness enables us 
to distinguish our images from our more direct sen- 
sory experiences. Finally, our feelings are distin- 
guished from our other experiences by the direct 
consciousness of the moment ; but their classification 
is rendered difficult, because of their evanescent charac- 
ter, and of the variety of the ways in which they appear 
at different present moments of consciousness. The 
classification that we have offered is merely an effort 
to be just to the complexity of the facts. It follows 
in some respects Wundt's account, but simplifies the 
latter. 

Yet now the question may still arise as to whether 
the account thus far given of our passing consciousness 
is exhaustive. For is there not, one may ask, still an- 
other kind of consciousness present, namely, that which 
constitutes what is usually called the Will, as it is 
manifested at any moment ? Is not this other kind of 
consciousness that which is sometimes also called 
Conation ? , 

§ 73. To this question we answer by a few further 
words concerning the place which the Will ought to 
occupy in a psychological study. All consciousness 
without exception accompanies the reaction of the 



194 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

organism to its environment. There is no sensitiveness 
without at least a tendency to the outward expression of 
this sensitiveness. While the manifold inhibitions of 
which we have earlier spoken may suppress the out- J 
ward appearance of the movements which we tend to ■ 
make, inhibition itself is, on the physical side, an essen- 
tially motor process ; and there is therefore no excep- 
tion to the rule that all consciousness accompanies 
responses of the organism io stimulation. As these 
responses, in so far as we are aware of them, not only | 
are from the objective point of view adjustments to our 
situation, but in general are viewed by ourselves as ex- 
pressions of our desire, there is a general sense in which 
tve can speak of all consciousness as an inner interpreta- 
tion of our oiun attitude toward our world. Of whatever 
I may be conscious, I am always aware of how some- 
thing is consciously estimated with reference to my 
needs and desires. There is, therefore, a good general 
ground for declaring that the whole of our consciojisness 
involves will, that is, a collection of attitudes zvhich we 
feel to be more or less responsive to our world. 

But, as a fact, this our conscious response to our 
world takes the form of being aware of objects, of being 
awai'e of what we are doing abottt the objects, and of feel- 
ing pleasure and pain, restlessness and quiescence, in the 
presence of these objects and of our own acts. The ques- 
tions as to why we act as we do, and why we feel as we 
do, involve inquiries that can only be answered in the 



SENSITIVENESS — THE FEELINGS I95 

light of considerations which will concern us later under 
the head of Docility or of Mental Initiative. But in 
our consciousness of our present action, and of our pres- 
ent attitude toward the world, in other words, in the con- 
sciousness of our present will, there are involved no other 
present features than those already described, namely, 
the sensory experiences, the images, and the feelings, as 
they are present at any time in the unity of consciousness. 
The words "desire," "longing," "choice," and the rest 
of the terms which are very properly used for the ele- 
mentary attitudes of the will, are names for conscious 
processes in which the aspects of sensory experience, 
of images, and of feelings can be readily distinguished. 
But besides these aspects, no essentially new ones are 
to be found, except in so far as we take account of the 
conditions upon which desire, choices, and the rest, de- 
pend. Of these conditions we shall later speak. But 
so far as present consciousness is concerned, to desire an 
object is to feel pain at its absence, or else is to be restless 
in the presence of our mere linages of the object. To 
strive after an object is to combine such a feeling of 
restlessness with the sense of strain due to our organic 
sensory experience of the actions whereby we pursue 
the object. To make a choice, is to assume an attitude 
toward certain objects which involves special instances 
of attention, accompanied with certain shades of feeling 
wherein various restless feelings gradually or suddenly 
give place to certain characteristic feelings of quiescence. 



196 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

In brief, while we are far from denying the presence 
of will in consciousness, our own view is that, in one 
aspect, the whole consciousjiess of any moment is an ex- 
pression of the will of that moment, in so far as that will 
is concerned with these sensory experiences, and with 
these objects, in view of the present values which our 
feelings give to the objects in question. The term " wiW 
itself is one ivhich is dei'ived ratJier from a consideration 
of the significance of our conscious life, when ethically 
estimated, or when viewed with reference to the out- 
ward acts which express it, or with regard to the in- 
ward results which flow from it, than a term of 
psychological description. The understanding of the 
phenomena of the will from a psychological point of 
view cannot result from a study of present conscious- 
ness alone, but must involve the considerations which 
concern us in later sections. We conclude, then, that 
the term " conation " stands for no aspect of present 
consciousness which has not been already, in general, 
characterised. 

Herewith our study of mental sensitiveness is com- 
pleted. We turn from the examination of our present 
consciousness to a consideration of the relation of this 
consciousness to our former experiences, and to the 
acquired habits of our organism. 



CHAPTER VIII 

The General Laws of Docility 

§ 74. Our whole method of treatment in this sketch 
forbids us to separate the study of the intellectual life 
from the study of the life that gets expressed in our 
conduct. Accordingly, in our account of mental docil- 
ity, we are equally concerned with the question as to hozv 
we acquire knowledge, and with the qtiestion as to how 
onr habits of action become moulded by onr environment, 
in such wise that these habits get represented in our 
consciousness. Externally viewed, the organism shows 
docility by its power to exhibit, in the activities of any 
moment, the results of former experiences, that is, of 
what has happened to the organism in the past. From 
the point of view of consciousness, our docility shows 
itself in the fact that our consciousness at any moment 
not only involves a response to the present situation, 
but shows signs of the way in which present experience 
is related to former experience. Since the conscious- 
ness of any moment is concerned both with the objects 
which we know, and with the acts which we perform or 
tend to perform in the presence of these objects, as well 
as with the feeling that the objects arouse in us, our 

197 



198 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

docility is equally shown : ( i ) by the fact that our 
present knowledge of things shows traces of the influ- 
ence of former • experience ; (2) by the fact that our 
present consciousness of our acts shows signs of being 
influenced by a consciousness that we have possessed 
of former acts, at the time when they occurred, and 
(3) by the fact that our present feelings show signs 
of being influenced in their character by our former 
feelings. Since all these evidences of docility con- 
stantly coexist in consciousness, there is no reason, 
except convenience, for treating them at all separately. 
The general laws that govern docility in the one case 
apply to all three cases. Our course of treatment of 
the phenomena of docility will therefore begin by 
pointing out the most general laws which govern the 
process, and by then illustrating the applications of 
this law to various special cases. 

§ 75. In speaking of the functions of the brain, we 
already laid stress upon the principle that determines 
all our docility, in so far as that docility depends upon 
physical conditions. Any fu7tction of the brain tends, 
within limits, to be performed with the viore facility 
the more frequently it has been performed before. This 
is the law of Habit. Its interpretation in terms of 
consciousness is, that any conscious process which is of 
a type that has occin^red before, tends to recnr fnore 
readily, up to the point where the limit of training has 
been reached, and to displace rival conscious processes. 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 1 99 

according as its type has frequently occurred. We 
speak a foreign language the more readily the oftener 
we have already spoken it. We repeat a poem more 
easily the oftener we have already repeated it. A 
frequently recurring emotion is of a type such that we 
readily fall into that emotional condition. The only 
qualification needed in making this assertion depends 
upon the fact that our training may reach a limit, 
beyond which we do not increase in facility. 

The chief consideration that needs carefully to be 
borne in mind, in even the most general application of 
the cerebral law of habit to the phenomena of con- 
sciousness, is expressed by calling attention to the fact 
that we can only speak of the recurrence of a certain 
type or sort of consciousness, never of the recurrence 
or repetition of a given conscious state itself. There 
are reasons why, without danger of serious error, we 
can speak of the same cerebral function as recurring. 
But it is not proper to speak of the same state of con- 
sciousness, or of the same experience, as being re- 
peated. For into the stream of consciousness no one 
can twice step and find it the same. No state of con- 
sciousness ever recurs. We can only speak of the 
repetition at different times of the same type or kind of 
conscious condition. The sorrows, the ideas, the sights, 
all the experiences of last year, of yesterday, or of ten 
minutes ago, have vanished, and will never recur in the 
world known to the psychologist. But the sorrow or 



200 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sight or thought of this moment may resemble, in type, 
experiences of former consciousness. And in so far as 
the same brain function recurs, the similar state of con- 
sciousness will occur also, and will repeat the type of 
its predecessor, which on the former occasion accom- 
panied that function. It is with this restriction that 
the law of habit may be translated from cerebral terms 
into the terms that apply to consciousness. 

§ ^6. The first result of the law of habit is that 
any complex cerebral function, which in the course 
of our experience gets established, is likely to have a 
history which includes events of the following sort. 
The function first comes to be established, in general, 
through the results of external disturbance, trans- 
mitted through sense organs to the brain. Let the dis- 
turbance involve the sensory elements A, B, C, D, 
Let the cerebral function which these disturbances at 
first determine involve certain corresponding processes 
a, b, c, d. What these corresponding reactions of the 
brain are, will depend upon the inherited structure of 
the brain, and upon the habits that it has acquired 
up to the time of the occurrence of the disturbances 
in question. In general, if the disturbances are novel, 
the brain will exhibit a certain inertia, or a certain 
slowness of definite response to the new stimuli. 
This inertia will be a symptom of the fact that the 
stimulation is new. Let the disturbances, however, 
often recur, and let the functions a, b, c, d, be often 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 201 

repeated. Then, in general, these functions will become 
quicker, and more definite, and will recur more read- 
ily. In a large number of cases the functions will 
appear to be not only quickened, but simplified, as 
the process often recurs. At the first, the response 
of the brain to the new disturbances may be decidedly 
diffuse, and may contain elements that are not useful 
to the organism. As a result of frequent stimulation, 
the useless elements may tend to be removed from 
the response, which may therefore become less diffuse 
and more simple, as well as more definite. Witness 
the way in which, when we acquire a new habit of a 
skilful sort, we gradually eliminate, even quite apart 
from any conscious selection, many useless movements 
of the type of " overflow," many awkwardnesses and 
redundancies which accompany our first efforts. The 
question why these redundancies disappear is a com- 
plex one, which involves physiological problems re- 
lating to the whole process of adaptation. But we 
all know that early movements of any sort are likely 
to be hesitant and redundant ; and that the sign of 
acquired habit is the presence at once of swiftness 
and of useful simplification. 

But still a further modification of the brain function 
results from the law of habit. The elementary pro- 
cesses which constitute the cerebral response may be- 
come so united together that, when the habit becomes 
well established, 07ily a portion of the original stimuli 



202 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

may suffice to produce the whole of the habitual response. 
Thus, in time, A may suffice as a stimulus to release 
the entire system of now closely knit elementary pro- 
cesses of which the response a, b, c, d, is made up. In- 
creasing swiftness, useful simplification, definiteness, 
and a close welding together of elementary processes 
in such wise that the stimulus which arouses one 
suffices to arouse all — these are the familiar phe- 
nomena of cerebral habits as these become settled. 
Such phenomena may be illustrated without limit in 
case of what happens with all our trained movements, 
with all our skilful arts. 

It will be noticed that the welding together of 
various elementary functions, which is so important 
a factor in the acquisition of complex habits, may 
appear either in the simultaneous or in the successive 
functions of the brain. Thus if, when we acquire any 
skill, the various fingers of one hand, or of both hands, 
have been led, through the appropriate stimulations, 
to cooperate in the same movement, as in sewing, or 
in knitting, or in playing a musical instrument, the 
brain functions which direct them in this activity may 
become so welded together that a single stimulation, 
or at all events a very simple one, may suffice to release 
at once all the sim.ultaneous motor disturbatices which 
are needed to carry out the function in question. Thus, 
when one learns music, the various fingers have at first 
to be guided by different stimulations into the acts 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 203 

that are necessary for the playing of chords ; but, for 
the trained musician, a glance at the printed music 
may suffice to put at once all the fingers needed into 
the simultaneous positions which secure his striking the 
chord. The same holds true in successive functions ; 
that is, one whom any stimulus starts in the motor 
processes that lead to a given series of acts may find 
these acts so welded together by habit that the 
accomplishment of each act in the habitual process 
furnisJies of itself the sufficient sensory stimuhts for 
the accomplishment of the next stage in the same pro- 
cess, so that no new guidance is needed for carrying 
out the whole series of acts, beyond the first stimulation, 
and the resulting series of motor, sensory, and central 
processes. 

§ Tj. Interpreted with reference to consciousness, 
the law of habit appears as the Law of Association. 
The conscious states that accompany any process 
which becomes habitual are such that, within certain 
limits, they are similar in any particular instance to the 
states that accompany any other repetition of the 
same process. In so far as they are similar, they 
directly illustrate the law of habit. If to the cerebral 
functions a, b, c, d, at the time when they were first 
performed, there corresponded the conscious states i, 2, 
3, 4, then when the function recurs, a sequence of con- 
scious states i', 2', 3', 4', may be observable, similar 
to the former ones. Or if the functions a, b, c, d, 



204 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

involve elements that are simultaneous, and if in the 
same way the conscious facts i, 2, 3, 4, are a simul- 
taneous variety within the same unity of consciousness, 
upon the recurrence of the function, a similar simul- 
taneous variety of conscious states will tend to be 
observable. In consequence, there will appear in the 
conscious states the law that conscious processes which 
have been either sinmltaneously or successively associated 
will have such a relationship establisJied that frequently, 
when states similar to one or to more of these associated 
states occur, states similar to the otJiers will tend to 
associate tJiemselves with these new states, so that, for 
instance, when the states i' and 2', similar to the 
former states i and 2 are found in consciousness, 
states 3' and 4', similar to the states 3 and 4 will tend 
to take place. Just as there will be a law of the 
tendency of various functions of the brain to become 
welded together either simultaneously or successfully, 
precisely so the laws of me^ital association will involve 
both simultaneous and successive associations. The 
existence of such instances of mental association, and 
their relations to the laws of cerebral habit, appear 
very readily in any case where we learn by heart a 
series of words, and so illustrate, as we repeat our 
lesson, the principle of successive association. Such 
connections also appear, on the other hand, when for 
instance we put a key into a lock. Here, however, 
we have simultaneoitsly associated ideas, corresponding 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 205 

both to the keyhole and to the shape and position of 
the key. But it is indeed the case that the facts of 
mental association tend, in one respect, to lose their 
parallelism to the facts of cerebral habit when we take 
account of the easily verifiable principle that, when our 
acts become very rapid, or otir simultaneous motor func- 
tions become very complex or very closely welded, oitr con- 
scious states no longer possess a wealth at all correspo7ident 
to the complexity of the functions. To the rapidly per- 
formed act, only a single conscious state may correspond. 
To the complex collection of simultaneous functions 
there may correspond only a single idea. Thus, ac- 
quiring a skilful habit, such as is involved in writing 
our own names, we may almost entirely lose conscious- 
ness of how we form the single letters. The musician, 
in striking the chord, may be aware only of how he 
intends the chord to sound, and may no longer have 
any mental process corresponding to the conscious 
states which were in his mind when first he learned 
simultaneously to adjust his fingers to the act. 

§ 78. In consequence of this failure of our conscious 
processes to correspond in their wealth to our habits, 
many further psychological complications result. For 
instance, v^e may learn a song. The function involves 
cerebral processes having to do both with the words and 
with the tune. These processes are perhaps developed 
somewhat in isolation, but, in any case, become welded 
together when we acquire the power to sing the song. 



206 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Because of the welding together of the functions, and 
because the tune and the words are represented also in 
our consciousness, we come to have a mental association 
of the words with the tune. In so far, the mental asso- 
ciation very correctly represents the cerebral facts, 
although it is never adequate to their wealth. It may 
now happen that, in some entirely different context, we 
hear a tune which, while not identical with the former 
tune, resembles the latter in some of its strains, or in 
the chords of its harmony, or sometimes merely in ex- 
tremely subtle features, such for instance as the char- 
acter of its rhythm, or the way in which it is sung. 
In such a case music,, which is remotely similar to the 
original time, may arouse in our minds a memory of the 
former tune and of the associated words. Such " asso- 
ciations by similarity " may occur in cases where the 
connection seems still more remote. Thus an expres- 
sion on a stranger's face may remind us of something 
that was said at home yesterday. Upon examination 
we may discover that this expression resembled one 
which frequently appears on the face of some in- 
mate of our home, and that it was this inmate who 
uttered the words in question. In all such instances 
the associative process, as it is represented in con- 
sciousness, seems to bring together facts that have 
never before been represented by similar conscious facts 
that occitrred together. And hence, in such cases, 
the conscious association may at first seem to be 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 20/ 

following Other lines than those which the laws of 
habit suggest. 

But if we pass to the conditions of the cojiscious state, 
in so far as these conditions are cerebral functions, we 
are able to reduce the explanation to the law of habit. 
The new experience that arouses what is called an 
" association by similarity," awakens functions that are 
not only habitual, but that involve elementary functions 
which had also taken part in other habits. Because, in 
these other habits, these elements had become welded 
with yet other simultaneous or successive functions, 
they have tended to arouse those other habitual func- 
tions into which they had entered. But these other 
functions, when once aroused, are accompanied by con- 
scious processes whose similarity to the conscious processes 
that reminded us of them we can only detect after the as- 
sociation has taken place. Thus the music now heard 
involves a harmony or a cadence whose cerebral accom- 
paniment has occurred before in my life. And this 
elementary cerebral function, when it has occurred 
before, has been a part of the very process that I went 
through when I learned a certain famihar tune with 
which certain words were associated. The elementary 
function once having awakened the rest of the habit of 
which it was formerly a part, I proceed to recall words 
which are associated with a music only remotely similar 
to the music now heard. A similar explanation holds 
in the other case cited. Hence my habits may so work 



208 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

as to bring together conscious facts such as were never 
together before. 

§ 79. The partisans of the theory of mental ele- 
ments, and in particular the school of Wundt, are 
nowadays accustomed to summarise all such processes 
as are here in question by saying that associations 
are formed not principally amongst our various total 
states of consciousness, but amongst tJie elements of which 
these states consist, so that the elements which enter into 
one 'inental state may recall tJirough simultaneous or 
through successive association elements which make up 
other mental states. In this way total states of con- 
sciousness, such as have never been habitually together 
in consciousness, may, upon occasion, appear to become 
associated through the association existing amongst 
their elements. 

If we substitute for the fictitious mental "elements" 
the elementary cerebral fimctions v^^hich take place as 
the accompaniment and condition of our mental pro- 
cesses, the application of the law of cerebral habit seems 
to be always possible; and then our account is freed 
from the entanglements of the theory of mental ele- 
ments. From this point of view every elementary cere- 
bral function, a, may become habitually united with 
various other cerebral functions in various complex 
habits. Whenever a state of consciousness, i, occurs, 
which accompanies this elementary function, a, then, if 
the conditions favour the awakening of some other 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 209 

cerebral habit into which the elementary cerebral func- 
tion enters, the other habit, if once awakened, will be 
accompanied with another mental process which will 
hereupon appear to be associated with the conscious 
process that we have called i. In consequence, the 
associative connectiojis amongst our various consciotis 
states %vill generally be much -more subtle than the gross 
application of the law of liabit will at once suggest. 

On the other hand, when we learn to substitute for 
our naifve states of consciousness those analysed states 
which we have before described, and which the theory 
of mental elements regards as such important guides, 
we tend more and more to detect, in these analysed 
states of consciousness, relatively simple states which 
now correspond to the elementary cerebral functions, 
and which enable our account of the associations to 
be stated more in terms of the habitual connections 
amongst the mental processes whose types we now 
have consciously before us. Thus we are able to say 
that the expression of the stranger's face now appears 
as that factor in the present consciousness whose simi- 
larity to the expression of the face of the inmate of our 
own family has directly suggested, by habitual connec- 
tion, the -word spoken yesterday. And this is the 
empirical truth that hes at the basis of Wundt's theory 
of the association of mental elements. 

§ 80. In ordinary mental experience we most readily 
observe associative connections in two forms, which 
p 



210 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tradition has long since called by the names, Asso- 
ciation by Contiguity and Association by Similarity. 
Association by contiguity is illustrated by any case 
where, for instance, a saddle reminds us of a horse, or 
a man reminds us of some other man with whom he 
has often been seen. Association by similarity has 
already been illustrated. It takes place, also, in case 
a portrait reminds us of a living man. The older 
accounts of the associative process sometimes mentioned 
other associative connections than these. Thus one 
spoke of association by contrast, as when a wedding 
reminds us of a funeral, or when a good man reminds 
us of a vicious man, whose characteristics are strongly 
opposed to his own. But such association can easily 
be viewed as association either by contiguity or by 
similarity. Association by cause and effect used some- 
times to be mentioned, and illustrated by cases such as 
those wherein the surgical instrument reminds us of 
an operation, or when the gathering clouds before a 
thunder-storm remind us of the rain. But here again 
association by contiguity is obviously prominent. From 
what has been said it is now evident that all these 
forms of association are instances of the same funda- 
mental process, viz., the law of habit. 

§ 8 1. It is manifest that the general law of associa- 
tion, as thus far stated, concerns itself only with ten- 
dencies constantly present ; but in no wise exhaustively 
describes the conditions that determine any individual 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 211 

sequence, or simultaneous union, of our conscious states. 
For, at any moment, our present consciousness accom- 
panies cerebral functions that have been in the past 
connected with very different other processes. Which 
one of these connections shall determine the actual 
process which hereupon becomes prominent in the 
life of the brain or in our outward conduct, is not 
thus determined. Thus, for instance, the speaking 
of any word of our language involves a cerebral func- 
tion, which has in the past been connected with great 
numbers of other functions, since we have spoken this 
word in the most various contexts, and have connected 
the speaking of the word with very different other 
functions. In consequence, the general law of habit 
insures indeed that the word, if familiar, shall arouse 
certain functions which are inseparably associated with 
it. But the general law of habit does not determine 
what other functions, for instance what other words, 
or what other cerebral processes of a nature such that 
mental images accompany them, shall be aroused 
immediately after we have heard or have spoken a 
given word. In consequence, our mental associations 
with the word may, upon different occasions, vary very 
widely, and yet all be due to the general law of asso- 
ciation. Thus, for instance, let the question be asked. 
Of what other word does the word " curfew " remind 
me .'' In case I have begun to repeat Gray's Elegy, 
the word " curfew " will at once by habit arouse the 



212 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sequence of words, "tolls the knell of parting day." 
In case a familiar modern bit of verse comes to mind, 
the word " curfew " will be associated with the phrase 
"shall not ring to-night." And thus the associations 
may vary indefinitely. 

What particular cerebral habit triumphs in case of 
a given present experience, the general statement of 
the law of habit enables us to predict, only in so far as 
it lays stress upon the fact that, all other things being 
equal, the most frequently exercised habit tends in any 
given case to be most readily aroused. As a fact, the 
word " curfew " is certain to have some inevitable, or 
as some call it "inseparable," association in the mind 
of any one who is familiar with the word. This associa- 
tion will be determined by the frequency of the repeti- 
tion of the habit in the past. But beyond this most 
general rule, the law of habit cannot lead us, unless 
it is supplemented by other considerations. 

§ 82. One of the most familiar of these supplemen- 
tary considerations is the one expressed by saying that 
vividly experienced and comiected mental cojitents tend 
to be favoured by the associative process. Interpreted 
in terms of cerebral habit, this means that functions 
which have involved decidedly vigorous alterations of 
our central condition tend to persist, and to be re- 
aroused more readily because of the deep impression 
made. Or, in other words, habitual tendencies become 
more potent not only by virtue of frequency of repeti- 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 213 

tion, but also by virtue of the vigour of the central im- 
pressions made when the habit is established. Thus, a 
single occurrence of a connection that makes a very deep 
impression may suffice to fix a habit which is expressed 
to consciousness in an inseparable association. Yet 
this principle of the associative potency of the vividness 
of our experience is insufficient to supplement the 
principle of frequency sufficiently to explain our actual 
associations. A further principle of considerable guid- 
ing value is furnished by the fact that habitual func- 
tions which have recently been aroused, tend to affect 
the direction which present functions take. When we 
have been for some time speaking in a foreign tongue, 
the present act of speech is accomplished more readily 
than it is when we first begin, after a long pause, to 
speak the foreign language. Here our present associa- 
tions are in part determined by the character of the 
immediately preceding associations. Every kind of 
activity tends to run more smoothly after it has been 
carried on for a little time. If we miss our way in 
repeating a well-known recitation, the prompter may 
fail to guide us successfully if he gives us but a single 
word. But if he repeats several words of the forgot- 
ten passage^ the combined associative effect of these 
words enables us to go further. Thus, in general, the 
present course of association is determined by the associa- 
tive influence, not merely of mental states noiv present 
to consciousness, but of mental states which have re- 



214 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY ■ 

cently been prese7it to consciousness. The interpreta- 
tion of this fact in terms of the nature of our cerebral 
function is not difficult. Every function, when once 
exercised, tends to prepare the way not only for the 
immediately succeeding functions, but for functions 
which follow at any time within a considerable interval. 
And consequently, amongst the associations that might 
occur at any moment, that one most likely triumphs 
which is most helped out by recent associations, 

§ 83. But the course of our associations is also deter- 
mined by still more complex processes. Some of these 
are dimly represented by the whole state of our feelings 
at any moment. In one mood we think of one kind 
of series of objects; or in other words, one set of 
associations then triumphs over all others. Change the 
mood, and the direction of our associations changes. 
James instances in this connection the influence which 
an emotional disturbance, such as that which accom- 
panies sea-sickness, may seem to exert upon the 
sequence of our associations. Yet the emotions them- 
selves are inadequate to indicate the way in which the 
general conditions of our brains at any moment deter- 
mine the selection of one rather than another series of 
habits as the triumphant tendency. 

We earlier spoke of what we called the " set " of the 
brain at any time. As, in a great railway station, with 
a system of interlocking switches, one group of tracks 
may be simultaneously set so that they are open to 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 21 5 

traffic, while other tracks are closed, so, only with infi- 
nitely greater complexity, the brain at any time is in 
a condition of preparedness for one rather than for 
another collection of interrelated and interwoven func- 
tions. Associations that correspond to some other con- 
nection of functions may be entirely excluded by this 
present "set" of the brain. Thus, during a lecture, 
the lecturer is forced to one series of associations, which 
the various incidents of the lecture room may modify, 
but which nothing but an entire interruption of the 
lecture can alter during the hour. The lecture over, 

I his brain soon assumes another " set," and he may be 
even unable to recall sequences of ideas that during the 

I lecture appeared perfectly obvious and necessary. Now 
our current mood, or emotional condition, often repre- 

I sents with considerable accuracy such a general condi- 
tion of preparedness on the part of the brain. In 
consequence, we may know that, in a given mood, we 
can think successfully on certain kinds of subjects, but 
hot upon certain others. But there are indeed changes 
and conditions of "set" of brain which are not ade- 

Ij quately represented by our moods and changes of 
•A mood. In such cases we have very imperfect conscious 

II warning as to what course our associations will take, 
and are obliged to find out what connections are then 
paramount merely by observing the result. 

Social influences especially affect the " set " of the 
brain. In one kind of company we find ourselves pre- 



2l6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

pared for one type of association, while in another 
company the same objects or ideas when presented 
arouse wholly different conscious consequences. In 
the phenomena which occur in great crowds of people, 
under exciting conditions (the so-called ** phenomena of 
the mob "), the alteration of associative processes from 
those which occur under ordinary conditions may be 
very impressive. Thus, at a public foot-ball game, a 
woman, usually pitiful and tender-hearted, and accus- 
tomed to associate the sight of physical injury only 
with kindly acts, or with expressions of sympathy or 
of horror, may show, in the excitement of the moment, 
extravagant signs of joyous fury at the sight of an 
injury to a player on the side to which she is opposed, 
and may for the time be reminded by this sight of noth- 
ing so much as the wish that this opponent should be 
rendered wholly incapable of playing further. The 
popular excitements of the French Revolution were 
largely made up, so far as concerns the psychical 
processes involved, of anomalous associations of ideas, 
and of deeds due to such changes in brain habits 
as were occasioned by the extraordinary social situ- 
ations of the time. Such phenomena tend greatly 
to veil the regularity of the general laws of asso- 
ciation, and come to be explained only when we 
observe that the habits aroused at such moments 
have a sufficient basis in cerebral tendencies estab- 
lished far back in the childhood of the persons 



;fe' 



THE GENERAL LAWS OF DOCILITY 21/ 

concerned, or in activities that their normal life keeps 
in the background. 

Amongst the general brain conditions which most 
modify the types of associative processes that can 
occur, the conditions of acute fatigue, and those 
chronic conditions which are in many respects equiva- 
lent to those of acute fatigue, are prominent. The 
German psychologist and psychiatrist Kraepelin has 
experimentally investigated such processes in his labora- 
tory. In acute fatigue the associations tend to acquire 
a character of incoherence, somewhat similar to that 
which is observable in the deliriums that accompany 
exceedingly exhausting nervous disorders. In the field 
of verbal associations, rhyming and punning associa- 
tions often tend in such states of fatigue to take the 
place of more rational and useful sorts of association. 
The habits upon which the power to add figures 
depends come to work loosely at such times, and fre- 
quent errors result. The phenomena are in a measure 
known to us in ordinary life. Laboratory experiment 
emphasises them, and shows them to be present in cases 
where they would escape ordinary observation. The 
psychological continuity between the phenomena of 
fatigue and, those of the incoherent forms of delirium 
is thus suggested. 



CHAPTER IX 

Docility 

a. perception and action 

§ 84. The general law of habit is manifested through- 
out the whole range of our docility. But its results 
appear in a large number of different types of mental 
phenomena, whose relations to the general law may 
now be illustrated. In case of all these types of expe- 
rience, we have phenomena illustrating the way in which 
what has happened to our organism in the past modifies 
both the present state of our consciousness and the 
present tendencies of our actions. We shall endeavour 
as far as possible to develop both these aspects side by 
side, not sundering the intellectual life, which has to do 
with our consciousness of objects, from our voluntary 
life, which has to do with our consciousness of acts, 
except in so far as mere convenience of exposition ren- 
ders it advisable to do so. 

§ 85. When external physical objects affect our sense 
organs, they produce complex disturbances both of these 
and of the corresponding centres of the brain. These 
disturbances in general tend to pass over into motor 
tracts, and to produce certain movements which, at first, 

218 



DOCILITY — PERCEPTION AND ACTION 



219 



are determined by the hereditary tendencies of the brain, 
i.e. by what is called our instincts ; while, in the long 
run, these instincts, modified as well as aroused through 
our various and repeated sensory stimulation, take the 
form of acquired habits of action. The accompanying 
conscioiLsness, in so far as it is simple, and is determ,ined 
by our habits of direct adjiistm,ent to objects that are re- 
peatedly present, constitutes what we call our perception 
of these objects. 

Thus, to take a comparatively simple instance, a child 
in the first year of life, who has already reached the 
"grasping" age, sees a bright-coloured object, grasps 
at it, seizes it, and carries it to his mouth. The act is 
determined by complex sensory stimulations, visual and 
tactual. The act itself consists of a series of move- 
ments. These involve focusing the eyes upon the ob- 
ject, by movements which include the accommodation 
of each eye to the function of clear vision, and the 
convergence of the eyes through a cooperation of the 
muscles of both. That the eyes thus act together as 
a single organ, has resulted from a very early training 
of inherited tendencies. The movements concerned 
also include the act of grasping. This is a complex 
motor process, which depends upon a modification of 
instinctive tendencies that slowly grow up during the 
early months of life. When the sight of the object is 
followed by the seizing of the object, one set of sense 
impressions leads, through a series of movements, to the 



I 



220 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

obtaining of another set of sense impressions, viz., those 
of touch. The child's effort to get at the object, ii 
order to seize it, suggests to us that, before he grasps 
the object, he has mental images which, in connection 
with certain feelings of restless eagerness, constitute a 
certain anticipation of how the object will feel when it 
is touched. These images are similar to former experi- 
ences of touch which the child has already obtained 
when, on former occasions, he grasped something. The 
successful seizure of the object leads over, through a 
series of feelings, and perhaps of images, to the con- 
sciousness that the child obtains when begets the object 
into his mouth. 

We have here, in the outward manifestations of mind, 
a sequence of movements which are manifestations of hab- 
its, the habits being due to the effect of former experi- 
ence upon inherited instinct. Within the child's mind 
we may very naturally suppose a seqttence of consciotcs 
states, which is determined partly by sense impressions, 
and partly by associations. When he sees the bright 
object, he simultaneously associates with this object cer- 
tain images and feelings ; and these images and feelings 
resemble his former experiences in cases where he has 
seen and grasped objects. The child's consciousness, as 
it proceeds from this first simultaneous association to 
the later stages of his grasping of the object, consti- 
tutes what we should call a series of perceptions of the 
object which he successively sees, touches, and tastes. 



DOCILITY — PERCEPTION AND ACTION 221 

But when he sees the object, he already, by means of 
simultaneously associated images of touch, and of his 
own muscular movements, and possibly of taste, antici- 
pates and perhaps eagerly desires what later becomes a 
present fact of his consciousness. In other words, the 
sight of the object becomes to him a sign of its attrac- 
tiveness and of its character as an object of touch and of 
taste. And in similar ways the object, when touched or 
when tasted, becomes to him, through association, a sign 
of yet other experiences than those that are present to 
him. For he continues to experiment upon it until he 
drops the play and passes over to some other object. 

The process thus hypothetically analysed from our 
point of view, is of a type that we are likely to con- 
ceive as present to the child's mind, just because the 
child, when awake and lively, may show, for a while, 
such a strong interest in studying the objects of 
sense. 

§ 86. In our own perceptive consciousness, as we or- 
dinarily possess it, there is usually less of emotional 
concern and of varied sensory examination than the 
child shows us. Hence our own perceptions often 
seem to us to be purely intellectual facts directly 
present to, consciousness when our sense organs are 
stimulated, and not to be so mingled with a conscious- 
ness of our feelings and of our motor processes as 
the child's consciousness would seem to be. But we 
have only to consider the origin of our present per- 



222 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ceptions in order to become convinced that what at 
present our sense organs show us with regard to the 
object, not only cojistitutes but a small portion of what 
we know or may know about the object, but also has 
acquired its whole present meaning for us through pro- 
cesses that, in the past, have been as complex as those 
of the grasping child, or perhaps much more complex 
than his have yet become. Our present conscious per- 
ception of any object which impresses our sense 
organs is a sort of brief abstract and epitome of our 
previous experience in connection with such objects. 
Because we have so often grasped such objects or 
approached them, or considered them, from various 
points of view, because they have so often excited 
the movements of our sense organs, or have incited 
us to get this or that control over them, because 
they have so often aroused our feelings of restless- 
ness or of quiescence, of pleasure or of pain, because 
so often we have discovered by experience the results 
which follow upon our movements in the presence of 
these objects — because of all this, I say, do our pres- 
ent sense experiences come to mean to us what they 
do at the moment when we perceive anything. We 
may perceive a remote object, which we have never 
grasped, such as the moon or as yonder mountain. 
But this object has in the past aroused us to great 
numbers of acts whose results we have experienced. 
Or, if the object is new to us, similar objects have 



DOCILITY — PERCEPTION AND ACTION 223 

aroused our movements. These movements have been 
attended with feelings, and have led to definite results. 
The total result of all such experiences is epitomised 
in the present instantaneous perception of this object. 

At the very least, then, when we perceive, our con- 
sciousness involves whatever our sense experience, due 
to the object, now forces upon our attention. Our 
consciousness also includes, as a general rule, some- 
thing corresponding to those complicated tendencies 
to movement which the object arouses within us. For 
perception accompanies some adjustment of our sense 
organs. And this adjustment is reflected in our con- 
sciousness, in however faint or unanalysed a form. 
And the perceived object, if dwelt upon, very fre- 
quently, reminds us in a more or less vague fashion 
of various sorts of action that in the past we have 
performed in the presence of such objects, in addition 
to these adjustments of our sense organs. 

Look long at a knife, and you are likely to think of 
cutting. Dwell long on your perceptions of a dog or 
of a horse, and you will find yourself tending to fondle 
or perhaps to avoid him. To perceive the curbstone 
just before you, as you walk, is to adjust your move- 
ment to the object. To hear the bell ring at the close 
of the school hour, or of a lecture, is to be aware of 
something now to be done. And meanwhile, as you 
dwell upon your perception of the object, you are 
likely to image what would be the result of doing this 



224 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

or that with the object. When you perceive the sharp- 
edged knife, you may be reminded not only of the 
act of cutting, but of the possible experience of being 
cut. When you see the heavy object, you may find 
yourself anticipating the effort that you would feel in 
lifting it. When you observe the bottle of medicine, 
you may remember the unpleasant taste of the dose. 
§ ^y. Meanwhile, whatever your other memories, 
the perceived object is p7'etty certain, if you dwell upon 
it, to arouse at least a shade of feeling. If it is a fa- 
miliar object, it feels familiar. The ^^ feeling of famil- 
iarity''' has been a good deal discussed by some recent 
psychologists. It normally accompanies the percep- 
tion of well-known objects. It is, on the whole, of the 
type of the feelings of quiescence. It is slightly pleas- 
urable in so far as other characters of the object do 
not unite with it painful feelings. Its persistent 
absence makes us long, when in a foreign land, for the 
sight of something homelike. Its marked presence 
when we return makes the most indifferent aspects of 
the home land seem decidedly pleasurable, so long as 
the joy of return lasts. In very faint form this feeling 
colours a great number of perceived objects, when 
other features of the perceptive consciousness are al- 
most wholly obscured. The feehng may be present 
even when we are quite unable to recall upon what 
former occasion we have observed a given object. The 
occurrence of the feeling under relatively abnormal 



DOCILITY— PERCEPTION AND ACTION 225 

conditions, that is, when we are sure that the object to 
which the feehng attaches itself is not really familiar, 
leads to that uncanny sense of having " experienced 
this before," which some people find a frequent and 
puzzling incident in their experience. In such cases 
the incident is due to conditions which remain still 
obscure, but which seem to be of central origin, and 
of a slight significance as signs of weariness or of a 
certain diminution of nervous tone. And in such cases 
the feeling of familiarity leads at once to contrasting 
and to often disagreeable feehngs of restlessness and 
perplexity. 

Now the feeling of familiarity seems to be a normal 
accompaniment of the excitement of established cere- 
bral habits, and seems to have to do with the ease 
with which they are carried out. And thus this aspect 
of the conscious process of perception has its obvious 
relation to our cerebral habits. 

§ 88. What we mean by the perception of an object 
is a cerebral process involving features of the fore- 
going kinds. The substance of the matter is that 
the present sense disturbance is at once associated with 
a consciousness due to already established motor habits, 
which have been trained in the presence of objects similar 
to the one now present. These habits may be of the 
most various kinds, and the consciousness excited by 
the object may have the most various relations to the 
habits themselves. They were slowly acquired, by 

Q 



226 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

means of acts that took a considerable time, and that 
were associated with the varied and complex conscious- 
ness. The perception is relatively instantaneous. It 
is a case of simultaneous association. It is relatively 
simple. None the less, it is what it could not have 
become except for the previous Jiabits of movem,ent in 
the p7'esence of such objects. When dwelt upon, a per- 
ception tends to pass over into a more explicit con- 
sciousness of what some of these motor habits are. 
It also tends to develop, in such cases, some of these 
habits themselves ; since, as we watch an object, we 
are likely to approach it, to grasp it, to point at it, to 
name it, and otherwise to indicate that our perception 
is but a fragment of a possible consciousness involving 
a whole system of feeling and of cojiduct iii the presence 
of such an object. 

The practical application of all this is obvious. If 
you are to train the powers of perception, you must 
train the conduct of the person who is to learn how to 
perceive. Nobody sees more than his activities have 
prepared him to see in the world. We can observe 
nothing to which we have not already learned to 
respond. The training of perception is as much a 
practical training as is the learning of a trade. And 
it is this principle upon which the value of all arts, 
such as those of drawing, of experimenting, and of 
workmanship, depends, in so far as such arts are 
used, as in all modern training is constantly done, 



DOCILITY — PERCEPTION AND ACTION 22/ 

for the sake of developing the power to perceive. 
It is because he has played music that the musician 
so well perceives music. It is because of his habits 
of workmanship that the skilled artisan or engineer 
can so well observe the things connected with his 
trade. It is because they do not know what to do 
that the untrained travellers in a foreign land often 
see so little, and find what they had hoped to be a 
wealth of new experience a dreary and profitless series 
of perplexities. 

The ordinary tourist who goes out in a " personally 
conducted party " to see the beauties of nature, or to 
marvel at the wonders of art, first looks to his guide- 
book or to the conductor of his party to find out 
what he should do or say or remember in the pres- 
ence of the wonders when he meets them. His device 
is in so far psychological enough. But since the 
guide-book and the conductor only teach him to re- 
peat formulas, such as the number of feet contained 
in the height of the pyramid or the precipice, or 
such as the phrases of admiration that it is customary 
to use in certain cases, the tourist, unacquainted with 
other modes of familiar reaction in the presence of 
the great objects which he is to observe, gains from 
the trip little but the memory that he has been in 
certain places, and has gone through the fitting pos- 
tures and the conventional speeches. Such a traveller 
brings back what he carries with him. And so indeed 



228 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

must all of us do, only it is a pity that the habits 
to which such perceptive processes appeal are so 
barren. It is the leisurely traveller who finds time 
to cultivate new habits, and thus gradually to see the 
wonders as they are. 



CHAPTER X 

Docility 
b. assimilation 

§ 89. All our higher intellectual and voluntary pro- 
cesses depend upon the general laws of habit in ways 
which still need a further characterisation. This char- 
acterisation must consider tJiree aspects of the ways 
in which our habits become organised, and of the 
external and internal conditions which determine such 
organisation. The first of these aspects may be ex- 
pressed in the following formula : New habits tend to 
become assimilated to older habits. The result is that 
all new events in the conscious realm tend, in conse- 
quence of the workings of the associative process, to 
be assimilated in type to the conscious events which 
have already occurred. The more special results of 
this tendency are seen in the fact that our intellectual 
life is an interpretation of new data in terms of 
already formulated ideas. A parallel consequence ap- 
pears in the fact that our new fashions of behaviour 
tend to superpose themselves upon our former habits 
in such wise as to produce a minimum of change in 
these latter. All forms of conservatism, both in the 

229 



230 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

life of the individual and in the life of society, illus- 
trate this principle. 

The second general aspect of our higher intellectual 
and voluntary life is expressed by the principle : In 
the course of mental development our conduct tends from 
simplicity and uniformity toward a co7ista7it differentia- 
tion — a differentiation which is not opposed to, but 
which runs parallel with the processes of assimilation 
just characterised. At the same time, and for the same 
reason, ou,r consciousness, as it develops, tends to that 
substittition of more highly analysed and more definitely 
varied states of mind which we have already illus- 
trated when we spoke of the way in which the psy- 
chologist tends, as he studies mental hfe, to substitute 
analysed for unanalysed states and processes of con- 
sciousness. The existence of psychology itself is con- 
sequently an extreme instance of this tendency to 
differentiation in the course of the development of 
consciousness. Yet it is not alone the psychologist 
whose mental life tends in the course of its develop- 
ment from the simple and uniform to the complex, 
analysed, and differentiated. All higher development 
illustrates the process. It is true that this process is 
always opposed and limited in its development by 
tendencies which we have already illustrated when we 
spoke of the general physical laws of habit. For 
functions which have become habitual do indeed tend, 
by virtue of that welding together of elementary pro- 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 23 1 

cesses of which we before spoke, to become so swift 
that our consciousness no longer follows their complex- 
ity. But in so far as our functions remain conscious, 
our consciousness tends to a constant differentiation. 

Third, we have an aspect of the higher conscious 
processes which no mere outline of psychology can 
pretend to treat adequately, but which even such an 
outline cannot venture wholly to ignore. The habits of 
the human being and his accompanying consciousness 
are on all their higher levels principally determined by 
social influences. His acts are either imitations of the 
acts of his fellows, or else are acts determined by a 
spirit of opposition to them. In consequence, we may 
formulate the principle here in question as follows : 
All our more significant activities and states of con- 
sciousness occur under social conditions, are responses 
to socially significant stimuh, and lead to the organisa- 
tion of a socially effective personality. The general 
significance of this principle will soon be made more 
manifest. 

I propose briefly to treat these three principles in 
their order, and to show how they influence the higher 
grades of mental life. The first, Assimilation, shall 
form the topic of the present chapter, the others of 
the immediately subsequent chapters. 

§ 90. Iru stating the general law of habit, we sup- 
posed the ideal case of a brain subjected to the influence 
of certain new stimuli A, B, C, and D. We supposed 



232 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the response of this brain to these stimuli to take the 
form of the corresponding cerebral adjustments a, b, c, 
d. We then pointed out how these functions, a, b, Cy d, 
would hereupon tend to become associated together, so 
that further occurrences of even a portion of the former 
stimuli might be sufficient to arouse to activity this 
whole collection of functions, whether they were simul- 
taneous or successive functions. But as a fact, when 
the already highly developed brain is impressed by new 
stimuli, or by new combinations of stimuli, the resulting 
cerebral functions are sure to be functions that already 
have habitual connections with still other cerebral 
functions, which the law of habit has already woven 
into closely related total processes. Thus the function 
«, which the new experience tends to arouse in connec- 
tion with the functions b, c, d, is already connected by 
habit with functions a', a" , etc. In similar fashion b 
is connected with functions b' , b" , etc. And the same 
holds true of the other functions concerned in that new 
connection which the disturbance A, B, C, D, tends to 
bring to pass. It follows that the new connection a, b, 
c, d, cannot be formed, through the influence of the 
new external disturbance, without the attendant awaken- 
ing of former connections amongst cerebral functions. 
But these older connections may, and generally will, be 
antagonistic to the formation of the new habit. For 
the connection of the function a with a' may by itself 
tend to lead to an act very different from that in which 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 233 

the functions a, b, c, d, express themselves when they 
are free to be carried out. 

To illustrate : Let the new stimuli be the sounds of 
certain words heard in this connection for the first time. 
The new habit, which this series of words would by 
itself tend to establish, would take the form of a power 
to repeat just that series of words. But now each one 
of these words may already have other habitual associa- 
tions. If any one of these associations is so strong that 
it tends at the moment to get expressed in acts, these 
acts, so far as they become realised, will prove an- 
tagonistic to the formation of the new habit. In 
general, if familiar objects are already known to me 
in certain connections, it may be for that reason all 
the harder to learn to remember them in new connec- 
tions. Or again, suppose that I am required to repeat 
some familiar act or series of acts, in a novel order, as 
for example to repeat the alphabet backwards. The 
new habit will meet at every step with a certain 
opposition due to the persistence of the old habit. A 
complex case of the difficulties in question is furnished 
by the perplexities of a countryman who first comes to 
live in a city, or by the vexations of a traveller in a 
foreign country. For, in all such instances, many of the 
new impressions tend to revive old habits, and conse- 
quently tend to hinder the acquisition of those new 
habits, which are needed in order to adjust the stranger 
to his novel surroundings. 



234 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

In consequence of this inevitable relation of new 
habits to old ones, what is most likely to occur in 
consequence of the influence of new disturbances 
upon an already highly trained organism, tends to 
involve a sort of compromise bettveen new impressions 
and former habits. Because the new impressions are 
vivid, they will tend of themselves very strongly to the 
formation of new habits and adjustments. But because 
the older habits are persistent, either they will constantly 
tend, by their interference, to prevent the new habits 
from becoming fixed, or, in case such fixation occurs, 
the old habits will gradually assert their influence by 
adding to the new functions older ways of behaviour, or 
by eliminating some of the characteristic features of the 
newer modes of conduct, or in general by assimilating 
the newly acquired functions to functions already present. 

§ 91. The resulting effects upon our consciousness is 
very profound. Neiv ideas are likely to be acquired only 
in case they become in a considerable fneasure assimilated 
to ideas such as zve already possess. New fashions of 
thinking tend, as we form them, to lose something of 
their novelty by assimilation with older ways of think- 
ing. Our whole life both of conduct and of intellect, 
both of volition and of comprehension, is therefore 
pervaded by interpretations of new facts in terms of 
old facts, by reduction of new practices to the form 
of old practices, and by a stubborn resistance, which 
increases with our age and training, to the formation 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 235 

of novel customs, or to the acceptance of novel 
opinions. 

This bearing of the law of the conservatism of cere- 
bral habits upon the constitution of our conscious life, 
is of the sort that we already in general characterised 
when we spoke of the law of association. While our 
consciousness does not in general correspond in its 
complexity to the wealth of our habitual cerebral pro- 
cesses, there are no connections amongst our conscious 
states which are not also represented by connections 
amongst our cerebral processes. Hence, the tendency 
of new habits to be assimilated to old ones is repre- 
sented by the tendencies of relatively novel mental 
states and connections to resemble in type those 
to which we are already used. 

§ 92. The illustrations of the law of assimilation in 
our conscious life are multitudinous, and are of great 
practical importance to the teacher. It may be well 
to enumerate a few of them : — 

First, novel objects, that are otherwise indifferent, 
and that are presented to the senses, tend to azvaken 
\ our attention^ and to become objects of definite con- 
1 1 sciousness, at the moment when we are able in some 
respect to recognise them. Apart from some decided 
importance which a novel object possesses for our 
feelings, the new in ou,r experience, i7i so far as it is 
\ unassimilable, tends to escape our notice. This has 
already been illustrated in case of our perceptions. 



236 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

The way for new experiences that are to be assimi- 
lated must be carefully prepared. If a pupil is to 
be made to understand novel objects, they must be 
made, as far as possible, to seem relatively familiar 
to him at each step of the process, as well as relatively 
novel. Otherwise he may simply fail to notice them. 
Sense in vain presents what organised experience is 
not prepared to assimilate. The exceptions to this 
rule occur, as just pointed out, only in case either 
of very intense experiences or of experiences that 
appeal pretty strongly to the feelings. Since experi- 
ences of this latter sort play too small a part in the prac- 
tical work of teaching, the law of assimilation must 
be especially and consciously considered by the teacher. 
We see in our world, m general, what we come prepared 
to see. 

The psychologists of the Herbartian school are ac- 
customed to call this process of the acquisition of 
knowledge through the assimilation of new data to 
former experience by the name of Apperception. 
The insistence that all learning is a process of apper- 
ception, and that perception without apperception is 
impossible, is one of the principal practical services 
of the Herbartian psychologists in their efforts to 
apply psychology to education. 

§ 93. But the principle here in question is not con- 
fined in its application to the phenomena of direct 
perception. TJie tendency of the old to assimilate the 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 237 

new infliiences the formation of all our cjistomary men- 
tal imagery. We have but a very inadequate tendency 
to image the details of our past experience, in so far 
as these details are unique, and are not repetitions 
of customary facts. Hence it is that our memory of 
oitr past lives takes the form of a memory of typical 
fashions of behavioiLr, of experience, and of feeling, rather 
than the form of a precise and detailed recall of the 
exact order of individual events. How far this holds 
true, popular psychology is disposed to ignore. For 
since it is indeed true that we do often recall, with 
more or less accuracy, a large number of detailed 
events in our own past lives, it becomes customary to 
suppose that such recall of details is the regular mani- 
festation of a normal memory. As a fact, however, 
the individual events in our past experience which we 
accurately remember, and which we are able to bring 
before us in the form of precise and adequate images, 
are but an extremely small portion of our actual past 
lives. Let the reader try to write down how many 
of the events that occurred in a single month of last 
year he can remember or image, as they occurred in 
his experience, and in their true order, and he will 
quickly be able to verify how small a proportion of 
the facts of which his life has consisted he is able to 
recall in the way in which they occurred. One reason 
why we commonly fail to take note of these defects 
of our memory for the details of experience lies in 



238 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the fact that those events which we most easily do re- 
call are likely to have been so often gone over and 
over in our memory that, in the case of such events, 
we have formed certain fixed habits of narrating them, 
or of presenting to our consciousness detailed series 
of images by means of which we depict them. But 
in all such instances a generalised habit has been in 
large measure substituted for the live memory of the 
individual event itself. And so we indeed recall this 
or that scene of childhood or of last year very clearly ; 
but we cannot recall how often we have recalled that 
event. For, as a fact, the memory of the individual 
event, as it now is in mind, is the result of gradually 
acquired habits of depicting the event in this or in 
that way. These habits, as they have been formed, 
have been subject to the law of assimilation. Repeated 
efforts to recall interesting past events have taken 
place, in accordance with our tendency to repeat over 
and over certain fashions of action, and to assimilate 
new processes with old processes. The result is that 
most of our memories of long-past events are systemati- 
cally, although very unequally, falsified by habit. We 
remember a way of recounting, or of imaging our 
own past, rather than this past itself. The result very 
clearly appears when one is able to compare the remi- 
niscences of pioneers, military heroes, and similar re- 
porters of their own experience, with contemporary 
records and monuments. 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 239 

§ 94. What we do remember with the greatest accu- 
racy regarding our past life is the repeated occitrrence 
of some type of experience. Thus, you remember what 
kind of person your brother is, and what it means to 
meet with him or to converse with him. But you do 
not remember upon how many and what individual 
occasions you have seen your brother. If some such 
occasions do indeed stand out with a relatively indi- 
vidual character in your experience, that is because, 
through the assimilation of new events to former fash- 
ions of memory and of behaviour, you have formed cer- 
tain fixed habits of repeating over and over in the same 
way your images or your narratives relating to those 
individual occasions. Or again, you remember the way 
home; but you do not remember how many times 
you have passed over that way. 

A classic instance, both of the defects of our mem- 
ory and of its general subjection to the law of assimi- 
lation, is furnished by the well-known accounts which 
older people are accustomed to give of what they fre- 
quently describe as the "old-fashioned winters " of their 
childhood. "The winters," so such a person may say, 
" are no longer such as they used to be when I was a 
boy. At that time the snow began to fall in November, 
and lay almost steadily until March. We had sleighing 
nearly all the time, and especially at Christmas. The 
harbour used to freeze over. The skating was almost 
steadily good. But nowadays the winters are full of 



240 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

unsteady weather : there are frequent thaws ; the sleigh- 
ing and skating are in no wise trustworthy ; the harbour 
almost never freezes ; in fine, the climate has changed." 
That such reports are in general not confirmed by 
meteorological records, may and usually does seem of 
little importance to the reporters of such reminiscences. 
His memory is his own. Facts are facts; and meteoro- 
logical science, he tells you, is notoriously uncertain. 
He prefers to trust his memory, which is perfectly 
clear on the subject. Now what most persons fail to 
notice is that the "old-fashioned winter" of such remi- 
niscences is, on its very face, a psychological and not a 
meteorological phenomenon. The human memory is 
essentially incapable of retaining a series of accurate 
reports of phenomena so variable and inconstant as 
those of the weather. In such a field only general 
characteristics can be remembered, especially after 
many years. How good an account can you now give, 
from memory, of the precise weather changes of even 
the past month ? But even general characteristics are 
themselves not accurately recorded by memory, in case 
of the weather, as they were presented in fact ; since we 
have no cerebral habits that are capable accurately 
of representing either mean temperatures, or amounts 
of snow fall, so long as precise records of these phe- 
nomena were not kept at the time. On the contrary, 
what we can retain in mind, especially from our early 
youth, are the memories of the more interesting and 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 24 1 

significant habits that winter zveatJier fomicrly developed 
in tis. In our memories the images that survive are, 
for the most part, assimilated by those which, when we 
recall the past, are directly connected with our more 
vividly recalled habits. As the youth formed his most 
important winter habits in connection with great snow- 
storms and decidedly cold weather, and as such phe- 
nomena occurred sometimes early and sometimes late 
in winter, and were of especial importance to him in 
holiday season, his memories were formed accordingly. 
What the old man recalls is therefore a general collec- 
tion of interesting winter habits, and of images clustered 
about them. These habits define for his consciousness 
a certain typical object, the "old-fashioned winter," 
which presumably never existed as he remembers it. 
The dreary individual detail of the actual winters of his 
boyhood has happily escaped his memory. But since 
lately, say in the present winter, he has such dreary 
details forced upon his present attention by uncom- 
fortable experiences, he does indeed recognise that 
there is a present state of facts which he cannot assimi- 
late to his memories of the "old-fashioned winter" in 
question. He consequently concludes that the climate 
is changing or has changed. Similar processes occur 
in all cases where the "good old times," the "young 
people as once they were," and the other facts of the 
past, are praised on the basis of established memory 
habits. 



242 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

§ 95. Notwithstanding the prevalence of assimilative 
processes of this kind, it indeed remains true that we 
are able, by persistent activities, aroused in us by our 
e7ivironment, to establish new habits which do stand in 
strong contrast to the habits formerly acquired. The 
assimilative tendency is merely one aspect, although 
indeed an enormously important aspect, of the brain's 
functions. And even the very fact mentioned already 
in connection with the general laws of association — 
the fact, namely, that at any stage of our development 
a great number of habits have already been developed 
in the brain, and that these older habits themselves tend 
to conflict with one another — gives us a means for find- 
ing room for decidedly new tendencies. For if a new 
tendency, namely, is to be formed, if there is also a 
predisposition to assimilate this new tendency to a 
previous cerebral tendency "^," and if in addition, 
there is a predisposition to assimilate the same new 
function to still another former tendency " ^ " ; but 
if meanwhile the functions " a " and " b " are incon- 
sistent with each other, and so tend to inhibit each 
other mutually, then there is, relatively speaking, more 
room for a new function to get established, much as 
it might have been established, in a brain not already 
burdened by the former habits "«" and"(^." Thus 
assimilation, which is usually a foe to novelty, may 
indirectly become a supporter of novelty, if only there 
are conflicting tendencies to various assimilations which 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 243 

in some respects inhibit one another, while nevertheless 
enough of our former habits remain positively effective 
to prepare us in a sufficient measure for the new com- 
ing habits. 

Thus, to illustrate : the untrained traveller sees at 
first little that is important in the foreign country, be- 
cause he assimilates what he sees, in so far as it 
interests him, to the things which he already under- 
stands, while what he does not assimilate he despises. 
On the other hand, let a traveller who has already seen 
various countries, for instance, countries in Europe and 
countries in North America and in Asia, visit another 
new country, such as one in South America, or in 
Africa. Such a traveller learns, of course, by assimila- 
tion, like any one else. But he also learns more in the 
same time than does the inexpert traveller ; and, while 
he assimilates, he rapidly acquires new insight. Why .-• 
In part, because what he sees tends at once to remind 
him of the conditions present in various formerly 
observed countries. But any two sets of recognitions, 
in such cases, stand as rivals one of the other. If both 
reach his clearer consciousness, the resulting contrast 
is helpful. If each inhibits the other altogether, the 
traveller is all the more prepared to be impressed by the 
new facts. In brief, if I observe C, and tend to assimi- 
late C both to A and to B, while A and B are them- 
selves so different from one another that each 
assimilation tends to inhibit the other, then through 



244 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

this very conflict, I may become more aware of the 
novel features of C. My assimilation is then no longer 
an unobstructed process in which the new is apper- 
ceived merely in so far as it at once "blends" with 
the old; but becomes an obstructed process in con- 
nection with which I have the maximum of opportunity 
to acquire decidedly new habits and images. 

It will thus be seen that the assimilative process is 
by itself never the whole of the process of acqturing 
knowledge, or of organising either our perceptions or 
our memories. The novel object that is merely assimi- 
lated is perceived indeed, but not as to its essentially 
novel features. In order that new habits and ideas 
should be acquired, i.e. in order that knowledge 
should grow, it is in general necessary that our assimi- 
lative processes should be obstructed as tvell as potent, 
and that there should be conflict amongst our former 
habits as zvell as support of jtew habits by them. 
In brief, just as the perception of similarity is sup- 
ported by the perception of difference in all our con- 
sciousness, just so the acquisition of knowledge never 
occurs by means of mere assimilation. Assimilation 
must always be supported by the presence of disturb- 
ances which arouse us to attempt the expression of our 
habits, and consequently must always involve such 
activities as tend in some measure to the modification 
of former habits by virtue of the influence of the new 
disturbances. 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILATION 



245 



§ 96. Our assimilations have not merely to do with 
the processes of perception and of memory : they ap- 
pear on the highest level of the intellectual life. All 
our thinking involves assimilation. When a novel ob- 
ject puzzles us, or when a problem baffles us, that is 
because we have not yet learned to assimilate the new 
"experience to our former fashions of conduct. But 
when our puzzle is thoughtfully satisfied, this occurs 
because we have learned to assimilate the new facts to 
the old principles, i.e. to adjust our former methods of 
conduct, with a minimum of change, to the new situa- 
tion. When the problem is solved, that is because what 
baffled us about a question which was asked, but to 
which we could not respond, disappears, because we 
have assimilated the matter at issue by remembering 
from our former experience an answer that serves the 
purpose. To be sure, such assimilation may be accom- 
panied with alterations of habits that will need to be 
considered later under the head of Mental Initiative. 
But every thoughtful process is, in at least one aspect, a 
process of assimilation. The same consideration occurs 
to us when we take note of what is meant by the 
process so characteristic of all the workings of thought, 
viz., of the process called, in ordinary language, the 
" explanation " of facts. To " explain " a particular fact, 
is to mention a principle under which that fact falls. 
But if this principle is to explain the fact, it must be an 
already known principle. An already known principle 



246 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

exists for our consciousness, because we have formed 
certain habits of conduct and of memory which this prin- 
ciple expresses in a brief formula. Before we discover 
how to explain the fact, it affects us as any sensory dis- 
turbance does, arousing reactions, but not as yet estab- 
lishing in us any sufficiently definite reaction. When 
we find the principle that explains the fact, we assimilate 
our mode of treating the fact to the already established 
habits of behaviour which the principle exemplifies. 

The reasoning process, as it usually occurs in con- 
sciousness, also involves, psychologically, a form of 
assimilation. We reason in so far as we discover that a 
result is true because of its relation to previous results. 
The "conclusion" of a process of reasoning follows 
from the "premises," because we already believe the 
premises, and observe that, if they are true, we are com- 
mitted, in advance, to the conclusion. The psychologi- 
cal processes that go on when we reason involve the 
assimilation of the act which our conclusion expresses 
to the habits of action expressed by the premises. The 
psychologist is indeed not concerned with the logical 
question as to why the conclusion necessarily follows 
from the premises. But he is interested to observe that 
what goes on in the mind when we reason is of the 
nature of an assimilation of relatively new modes of 
conduct, such as the conclusion expresses, to already 
established modes of conduct which the premises put 
into words. That no such assimilation is complete, that 



DOCILITY — ASSIMILx\TION 247 

every new mode of conduct differs in some respects 
from every former mode of conduct, even from those 
which it most resembles, has already been pointed out. 
In a later chapter we shall study certain higher aspects 
of the reasoning process. What here concerns us is 
that while reasoning is decidedly more than mere assimi- 
lation, it always involves assimilation. 

Thus, on the highest and on the lowest levels of con- 
sciousness the assimilative pi'ocess appears — never as 
the whole of what happens, since whenever we assimi- 
late anything new to anything old, we also establish 
new associative connections ; but always as an aspect 
of what happens, since the trained organism can never 
do anything entirely new, and since relatively new 
habits inevitably involve modiiications of already ex- 
isting: habits. 



CHAPTER XI 

Docility 

c. differentiation 

§ 97. In speaking of the unity of consciousness we 
pointed out that there is in it always a variety, which 
is itself inseparable from some sort of unity. We 
also pointed out that this variety appears in two ways; 
namely, as simultaneous variety ; (as, for instance, when 
we see at once several letters on the page before us) 
and successive variety (for instance, when we hear in 
the psychological present moment a brief series of 
sounds, such as drum-taps, or such as the successive 
tickings of a watch). We further saw that, as our 
consciousness develops, we may come to possess more 
and more highly analysed mental states, such as~ the 
musician possesses when he analyses the chord that, 
to the unmusical man, is a single, although rich sound, 
whose variety is but faintly observable. It is important 
to notice that this increase in analytic power occurs 
especially in case of our analysis of the simultaneous 
variety present in consciousness. If the tones of the 
chord are struck separately and successively, even the 
unmusical man notes their variety, in case the succes- 

248 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 249 

sion is sufficiently rapid, and is not too rapid. Tlie 
musician observes the variety when it is simultaneous. 
It is, indeed, true that, in different states of our con- 
sciousness, we are, indeed, differently disposed to observe 
successive varieties ; and by habit we do greatly in- 
crease our skill in observing the successions that occur 
in the world. Nevertheless, tJie increase in our power 
to perceive simultaneous variety and to bring it into re- 
lation to successive variety, especially marks mental 
growth. To the untrained man a collection of pre- 
sented facts is likely to seem a confused unity. To 
the trained mind collections of facts which are pre- 
sented siinultaneously are more clearly differentiated. 
To be sure, our power to distinguish simultaneously 
presented facts, is always very sharply limited by the 
narrowness of our conscious field. Only a very few 
(three or four) distinct facts can be discriminated in 
any single act of observation of simultaneous varieties. 
But within the hmits of consciousness we can learn to 
discriminate what is not successive. And doing this, 
even in our own narrow way, again and again, gives 
our consciousness its character as a sustained process 
of distinguishing between the facts present to us. In 
general, nearly every instance of such power, as it 
appears in the adult consciousness, seems to involve 
acquired skill. It is this skill to which we refer when 
we speak of the differentiation of consciousness. The 
result of such skill is that, at every moment, the simul- 



250 OUrLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

taneous and the successive varieties of consciousness 
come to be intimately interwoven and connected. 

§ 98. How the world appears to the wholly un- 
trained consciousness we can only conjecture. But 
we certainly get no evidence that, at the outset of 
life, the infant clearly distinguishes between various 
present facts. It is also certain that, as the case of 
the musical chord shows, the significant discrimina- 
tions made farther on in life are, in general, the re- 
sults of training. Of what nature is this training ? 
As pointed out by Professor James, and as very gen- 
erally emphasised by modern psychological work, our 
discriminations of simultaneous facts seem, in general, 
to be derived f'om previous discrimination of successive 
facts. It is not possible to say that this law is absolute, 
or that no discriminations of the simultaneous can occur 
apart from previous experience of the successive. But 
on the whole, the influence of the discriminations that 
we actually make between successive facts upon our 
later discriminations of simultaneous facts is obvious, 
and is of very great importance. Thus, when the 
notes of the chord have been heard in quick suc- 
cession, it then becomes much easier to distinguish 
them when they are sounded simultaneously in the 
chord. When one has first observed in succession 
a number of various tones of red, and has then ob- 
served in succession a number of cases of red that 
differ only in saturation, i.e. in the degree in which 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 25 1 

they resemble colourless light, it then becomes possi- 
ble to distinguish between the colour and the satura- 
tion of a given presented instance of red. When 
one has become acquainted separately and at dif- 
ferent times with two persons who look very much 
alike (as for instance, twins), it becomes much easier 
to observe the difference between them when they 
are together. Whoever wishes to compare very care- 
fully two objects that are nearly alike, examines them 
in succession, first one, and then the other. Then, as 
he sets them side by side, their difference becomes 
more obvious. The general result of such familiar 
facts is the proof that, on the whole, ive learn about 
the differences of things as these differences appear in 
succession, and that hereby we acquire, or at any rate 
very greatly increase, our power to observe simultaneous 
differences. 

The process in question goes on through life. Suc- 
cessive variety is continually used as a means of inter- 
preting simultaneous variety. The series of conscious 
facts that follow one after another are constantly used 
as a means of interpreting the coexistent varieties of the 
world without us. This tendency to interpret the simul- 
taneous in terms of the successive, is one of the most 
deeply rboted tendencies in our nature. It has to do 
zvith that connection between consciousness and movement 
upon which we have all along been insisting. Our acts 
come first to our consciousness as successive experiences 



252 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

which present to us differences as they pass. As a 
result of these successively observed differences we be- 
come able, even when we cease some particular act, to 
become aware, even in our simultaneous experiences, of 
varieties which correspond to those that the act pre- 
sented to us successively. In consequence, our world 
comes to seem to us differentiated into various coexist- 
ent and contemporaneous facts. Yet we first learn of 
these very facts through our consciousness of the suc- 
cessive stages of our deeds. Our whole idea of the 
world of coexistent facts seems thus to be derived, just 
so far as it is an articulate idea, from our perception of 
successive facts. At least, if this is not wholly the case, 
the matter is in the main thus to be expressed. 

§ 99. The first great example of the way in which 
the world of coexistence becomes differentiated as a 
consequence of what we have learned through succes- 
sive acts, is furnished to us by the properties which we 
ascribe to the physical world in space. In space before 
me I see two objects which I regard as coexistent, and 
which I more or less clearly observe as simultaneously 
present. Yet I learn to discriminate just such objects, 
to compare their places, to know whatever I know about 
their spatial relations, through successive acts by which 
I first fix my eyes upon one, and then focus them upon 
another of these objects, or by which I first touch one 
and then the other. In other words, I continually ex- 
plore space through countless successive acts of sight 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 253 

and of touch, and through, countless movements which 
I also accomplish successively. But I also constantly 
reap the harvest of these numberless successive acts in 
the form of my power to discriminate simultaneously 
present spatial phenomena, and to set them in definite 
relations as coexistent. The process, despite its com- 
plexity, reduces to the general type already described, 
viz., I perceive the difference between a and b as simul- 
taneous facts, because I constantly study afresh the suc- 
cessive differences of the type of a transition from a to b. 
This process of exploring space by successive move- 
ments never comes to an end throughout our waking 
life. Our restlessly moving eyes, our constantly chang- 
ing attitudes, as we observe spatial relations, show that 
we are all the while interpreting spatial relations afresh 
in terms of our experiences of succession. But what 
here most interests us is that zve constantly make use 
of the successive discriminations for the sake of inter- 
preting coexistent and simiiltaneoiis facts. The physi- 
cal world without us contains coexistences. These we 
wish to interpret as they are. But we must first give 
these coexistences, so to speak, a dramatic expression, 
in terms of our acts, in order that we shall be able to 
appreciate their very coexistence. How numerous 
and how fine the acts of successive discrimination are 
which we thus employ in our observations of the 
space world, modern experimental psychology renders 
constantly more obvious. Every picture that we ob- 



254 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

serve is explored by the eyes in ways which deter- 
mine our whole judgment of the relations of the 
various parts of the coexistent picture. Every care- 
fully observed object about us has its contour explored 
by successive focussing of the eyes on one part and 
another of its outline. 

§ lOO. Another important instance of the bearing of 
succession upon simultaneity in the acquiring of new 
powers to discriminate, appears in the whole process of 
education. To learn about a new subject-matter that 
involves complex relationships of any sort includes, in 
the first place, long series of successive acts properly 
arranged, — acts of sensory observation, of recalling 
images, of repeating words, of drawing diagrams, of 
performing experiments, and so on indefinitely. Then 
we acquire gradually the power to "survey at a glance" 
the results slowly brought to consciousness through 
these successive acts. This process of surveying at a 
glance involves a high degree of differentiation of our 
simultaneous conscious states. This differentiatioft of 
the simultaneous slowly results from the repeated acts, 
and from the powers of discrimination which have been 
cultivated i7i connection with them. The more success- 
ful we have been in the successive acts, the more skil- 
ful we shall be in the perception of relationships 
between simultaneous facts. The results of our deeds 
may thus be surveyed by us as if from above, as the 
traveller who has reached a height looks back with 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 255 

appreciation on the country through which he has 
wandered, while unless he had wandered through it, 
or through similar country, the view from above would 
mean little to him. Narrow as our field of conscious- 
ness always remains, zv hat power we have to survey the 
simidtaneotts bearings of its facts is thus due to our 
pozver to find in the instant, iji some sense, an epitome 
of the history of our own deeds. 

An important practical result follows as to the mean- 
ing of \k\.Q. prominence that the dramatic element has i?i 
all instruction. Narrative more readily appeals to us 
than does description, because the latter calls upon us 
rather more for the formation of distinct but simultane- 
ous groups of images, while the latter plainly appeals 
to our power to repeat, in the form of images, succes- 
sive acts with whose types we are already familiar. 
Although, in case of both narrative and description, as 
they appeal to a somewhat mature consciousness, both 
simultaneous and successive images are presented to 
consciousness, still narrative has the advantage of fix- 
ing our attention more upon the kind of discrimination 
which we find easiest, namely, the discrimination of suc- 
cessive facts. 

§101. A very notable further instance of our ten- 
dency to interpret simultaneously presented objects, 
images, and relationships, in terms of successive acts, 
is flemished by oitr whole process of judgment, and in 
consequence by the entire work of our thought. If a rose 



256 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

is before me, and I proceed to judge that this rose pos- 
sesses colour, odour, and various other properties, the 
properties are simultaneously present in the rose ; and 
I wish to make clear to myself and to others this simul- 
taneous complex structure of the rose. But I do this 
through a series of acts of successive attention, which 
differentiate to my mind first one and then another of 
the properties of the rose. Having thus distinguished 
the properties through successive acts of attention, I am 
able to recognise them again as present simultaneously in 
m.y object. That they coexist is something that I 
appreciate and express by successive deeds. Only at 
the conclusion of these deeds do I again appreciate, at 
a glance, the variety in unity of the rose. Our judg- 
ments thus always involve two aspects of the conscious 
process, — aspects which are often called Analysis and 
Synthesis. The analysis, — here the naming and 
attentive dwelling upon each of the various characters 
of the rose, is accomplished through a succession of 
deeds, whereby I bring to my mind names, and other 
associates of the various properties which I distinguish. 
The so-called synthesis, in so far as it is a simultaneous 
synthesis, I accomplish at the instant when I am able to 
be aware of these properties not merely as successive 
facts, but as coexisting in the rose. The synthesis 
results from the analysis. But the judgment is not 
complete until both processes are accomplished. The 
mere analysis gives me a succession of states of mind, 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 257 

which are in so far not perceived as aspects of the one 
rose. To obtain this latter knowledge I must possess 
the synthesis. Yet the synthesis could not be unless I 
analysed. All our processes of judgment involve such 
reconstructions in terms of successive acts, — reconstruc- 
tions of that unity of things which we conceive as also 
possessing a simultaneous character. One may also 
call our judgments Imitative Processes, whereby we 
reconstruct our viezvs of objects by putting together suc- 
cessive ideas of our own. But such imitations do not 
get their complete meaning for us until we have recog- 
nised that they express, in our own terms, what we find 
in the object that our imitative reconstruction is analys- 
ing. And this is what we have called the recognition 
that, in our object, those characters are brought into 
siniulta7ieous synthesis, which our judgment has inter- 
preted through a succession of deeds. Whenever, again, 
we study the nature of an object by drawing a picture 
of it, our successive processes make us conscious of what 
is simultaneously present in the object, in the same way 
in which our processes of judgment accomplish a similar 
end. 

§ 102. The differentiation of consciousness occurs 
then in the main through these dramatic processes. It 
is in this very way that the psychologist himself learns 
to substitute analysed states of consciousness for the 
relatively unanalysed states of our naive consciousness. 
It is in this way too that all the simultaneous relations 



258 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

of things become clear to us. It is in this way that 
comparison and scientific synthesis and our conception 
of the whole of things grows up in our minds. For the 
trainer of minds the general resulting advice is : Under- 
take to systematise this dijferentiation of co7tsciousness 
through fittifig series of successive deeds. Remember 
that without such successive deeds there is no noteworthy 
intellectual tmderstanding of simultaneous facts. The 
zvhole process of edtication is therefore a dramatic process., 
an interpretation of truth through conduct, a learning to 
appreciate the universe by successively responding to 
various parts of it, a reaching of unity through variety, 
an attainment of synthesis by means of analysis. 

§ 103. The process of differentiation is accompanied 
by a series of phenomena of which we already made 
mention in our opening account of the unity of con- 
sciousness (§ 34). The consideration of this series of 
phenomena brings to light a most important relation 
between our current feelings and our docility. To 
this series of phenomena we give the name : The 
Process of Attention. 

As we saw in our opening statement, our developed 
consciousness has a foreground and a background, or, 
again, has two or three or four mental states that at 
any moment possess a certain "relief" as they "float 
on the stream," while "the body of the stream con- 
sists of contents that can no longer be sharply sun- 
dered from one another." 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 259 

It is needful here to speak of the process by which 
our momentary mental states get this clearness or the 
" relief." In so far as we consciously profit by the 
relation between our present and our former states, 
our mental states are the expressions of docility. But 
in so far as we are directly satisfied or dissatisfied 
with our passing mental states they are the objects 
of our feelings. And now as it happens, we often 
find present in ourselves feelings of satisfaction and 
dissatisfaction in the very fact that given present states 
have some sort of relation to former states {e.g. are 
novel or familiar, are puzzling or comprehensible, 
have obvious relation to our past habits, or need new 
adjustments, etc.). But thus our experiences come to 
have a new and important relation to our feelings. An 
experience may be said to possess intellectual value 
in so far as it tends to mould our conscious habits. 
This value it possesses over and above the value for 
passing feeling of what, as a momentary mental state, 
it contains (as, for example, pleasure or pain). But 
as a fact we are able to have feelings which express aft 
immediate, a passing, and, of course, often a m.istaken, 
estimate of this intellectual value itself. Such feel- 
ings are called our current " feelings of interest." 
They have, in the main, the character of feelings of 
restlessness and of quiescence, — of restlessness so 
far as we question, seek, or expect information, of 
quiescence so far as we get our interests satisfied. 



26o OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

They have, however, a curious and invariable char- 
acter, which often brings them into sharp conflict 
with our other feehngs of the same moment. A pain 
or an agonisingly perplexing problem, although we 
hate it keenly, may interest us intensely, because we 
want to dwell tipon it until we have understood its 
cause or nature. When such interests are those of 
predominant satisfaction they may lead us to dwell 
on the experience for its own sake, as a familiar or 
comprehended fact. Thus a young child may love to 
have its known stories told over and over, or to find 
picture after picture of familiar objects {e.g. men), 
and to say triumphantly "■ Man," " Man," on viewing 
each picture. Here the mere familiarity of the 
experience is itself what satisfies. But even if the 
predominant interest in the experience is one of dis- 
satisfaction (as when one is pained or puzzled), still, 
the only way to satisfy the current intellectual inter- 
est in the pain or puzzle {i.e. to reduce the dissatis- 
faction) is again to dwell on the experience until its 
relation to the past has been altered {e.g. until it has 
become familiar or has been " made out "). So it is 
peculiar to the feelings of interest, or to the "intellec- 
tual feelings," that, whether they are cases of satisfac- 
tion or of dissatisfaction, the only way to hold the 
satisfaction or to diminish the dissatisfaction is, in any 
case, to dwell for the time on the experience as an 
experience. For, as we have here defined our term, 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 26 1 

the interest is not a feeling of satisfaction or of dis- 
satisfaction with what the mental state in itself alone 
chances to contain {e.g. with its pleasurable or painful 
tone as such), but with its relation to otJier states or 
to one's habits. Hence in states of intellectual inter- 
est, one questions, analyses, compares — does whatever 
tends to relate this object to other objects. One is 
seeking to know ''what to do with it," or is rejoicing 
in the fact that one does know what to do with it. 

Now, atte7itio7i is a process that involves states of 
mind and physical activities which tejzd to satisfy such 
an intellectual interest or, in other words, attention is 
the process of furthering our current interest i7i an 
experience when viewed fust as an experiejtce. When 
I attend to a thing I either try to recognise or to 
understand it, or I take contentment in an already 
existent recognition or understanding of it, and dwell 
upon it accordingly. Attention is called " active " in so 
far as the feelings of restlessness which accompany our 
trying to recognise or to understand, predominate, or 
are at any rate prominent, amongst the feelings pres- 
ent at the moment of attention. But when the other 
phenomena of attention are present, while the pre- 
dominant feelings are those of quiescence, the atten- 
tion is called " passive." 

If our attention succeeds in any case — i.e. if our 
passing feeling of current interest is furthered — the 
object of this interest groivs clearer in our minds ; 



262 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

that is, it grows more definite and gets a better 
"relief" upon its background. This is the one sure 
result of the furthering of the temporary and pass- 
ing intellectual interest, as this interest has here been 
defined. What we attend to may, as a mental state, 
be faint in content, but as an experience it grows 
important. It is differentiated better from whatever 
goes along with it, is more effective in arousing asso- 
ciations, is recognised more readily, if already some- 
what familiar, and tends to be more effective in 
modifying our already existent habits. Attention in- 
volves, of course, by definition, feelings. But these 
feelings from their nature have, even as feelings, their 
intellectual value. And attention is the conditio sine 
qua noil of all important intellectual processes. 

The less artificial and adventitious are our passing 
interests, the easier and more effective is their satis- 
faction. Accordingly, it is difficult to attend long to 
anything merely because we abstractly think that we 
ought to attend. We must have our interest pretty 
spontaneously, or we can never hope to satisfy it. 
What already attracts us in itself is therefore, in 
general, the more readily attended to in regard to its 
interest as an experience. The relatively familiar is 
also more closely attended to than the incomprehen- 
sibly strange, unless the latter, by its painful or its 
portentous aspect, or by its sensuous or other direct 
charm, arouses our longing to comprehend its signifi- 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 263 

cance. Children often wholly neglect whatever is not 
yet comprehensible to them in their lessons, although 
some uncomprehended things, such as fairyland, or 
the doings of their elders, may arouse their keen in- 
terest by appealing to their love of beauty, or by 
awakening their imitative instincts. Interest in ob- 
jects because of their familiarity or their comprehen- 
sibility has been called "derived" interest, and its 
furthering " derived attention " ; but, as a fact, all 
current interests are, as already shown, more or less 
secondary feelings. In general, active attention to 
any one object is highly unsteady and fluctuating in 
its character. Sustained active attention, just because 
of the restlessness involved, is possible only in case 
our objects, or our own relations to them, are con- 
stantly undergoing change. 

The physiological accompaniments of attention seem- 
to be of three sorts : (i) Adjustments, of a motor type, 
whereby our sense organs are brought into better rela- 
tions with the object of our interest, or are brought 
into positions that habit has associated with clear at- 
tention, while our organisms are also rendered other- 
wise more impressible. Certain characteristic attitudes, 
gestures, and alterations of breathing and of circula- 
tion, belong to this type. (2) The assumption of a 
"set" of brain that tends especially to favour those 
cerebral habits which are of most use to use in our 
efforts to comprehend objects of the kind wherein we 



264 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

are interested. The control which the attention ap- 
pears to possess over our trains of association is due 
to this type of cerebral accompaniments of the pro- 
cess. (3) In close connection with (2), the assumption 
of a " set " of brain which tends to inhibit all move- 
ments and habits such as would interfere with the 
satisfaction of the ruling interest. Hence the still- 
ness, the " absorption " of the attentive person. Ac- 
tive attention is always a highly inhibitory function. 
Herein lies another reason for its fluctuating character 
in children, and in many of our states of weakness. 

§ 104. The presence of discrimination in our trained 
consciousness is subject, even on the highest levels, 
to decidedly obvious limitations. If we are carrying 
a heavy weight, and some one adds to that weight a 
very small additional burden, we do not feel the dif- 
ference. If the sun is shining through the window 
and somebody lights a gas-jet, we notice very little, if 
at all, the difference. In brief, decidedly slight differ- 
ences in the intensity of our sensory experiences es- 
cape us. This is a matter of common knowledge. 
But the very mention of these facts calls also atten- 
tion to another and closely associated consideration, — 
one which has acquired great notoriety through the close 
examination which modern experirfiental psychology 
has given to the whole subject. If we estimate the 
character of our mental experiences merely in terms 
of the characters which we know to belong to their 



DOCILITY— DIFFERENTIATION 265 

Stimuli, we are disposed at first to expect that, if we 
are observing a bright light, and if some one adds a 
new light (namely that of the gas-jet) to the light al- 
ready present, we shall observe the difference, if the 
additional stimulus is great enough. But from this 
point of view we should expect that the lighting of 
the additional gas-jet would make the same difference 
to our internal experience, whatever might be the 
brightness of the light before the new gas-jet was 
added. Or to take another illustration, if I have an 
experience corresponding to the attempt to lift an ob- 
ject that weighs a pound, and if this experience nor- 
mally corresponds to that object, then I should be 
disposed to expect that in case I were carrying ten 
pounds and some one added a pound to my burden, 
the addition would make the same difference to me 
as it would make if I were carrying a hundred pounds, 
and the pound were then added to my burden. But 
a moment's reflection shows us that we are unable thus 
to make our mental experiences precisely correspond, 
in all respects, to what we know about the objects 
which are the stimuli of these experiences. For the 
addition of the pound will be noticed if it be added to 
the burden of ten pounds. It may altogether escape 
attention' if it is added to the very much heavier bur- 
den. The lighting of the gas-jet will make a very 
great difference if the gas-jet is lighted when the room 
is nearly dark. But the lighting of this same gas-jet 



266 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

will make very little difference to our experience if 
the room is already bright, that is if the sun is shining. 
A stimulus may thus be such that, if it acted alone, 
the corresponding experience would be very important 
or very intense. Yet if this stimulus be added to an- 
other which is of considerable magnitude, and which 
has already produced an experience of great intensity, 
the additional stimulus may go wholly unnoticed. That 
the principle here concerned has some very deep re- 
lations to our experience becomes fairly evident, even 
apart from experiment, if we consider certain other 
very familiar facts. When we are reading print on a 
page before us, we are constantly guided in our reading 
by the fact that we discriminate between the brightness 
of the white page and the lesser brightness of the por- 
tion of the page where the printer's ink lies. Our 
power clearly to see the letters depends upon this 
difference of brightness. But if the light fades, it 
may fade very considerably before we notice that the 
letters have begun to grow dim. Yet when the light 
is faint the actual difference in brightness between the 
white page and the black letters will be very much 
less than the difference between the two when they 
are seen in a bright light. Not only does this hold 
true of objects such as letters printed on a page. It 
holds true, within limits, of the finer markings in an 
etching or a drawing. The light may diminish consid- 
erably and yet we may see as much and as fine de- 



DOCILITY— DIFFERENTIATION 26/ 

tail in the drawing as we saw in the brighter Hght. 
Thus even ordinary experience forces upon us the 
fact that ozir judgments of differejices are in some meas- 
ure relative. One of the earliest fields of research in 
modern experimental psychology was the one opened up, 
in the effort to understand such facts, by Weber, and by 
the distinguished psychologist and philosopher Fech- 
ner. Experimental research soon showed that our dis- 
crimination of small differences, in the case of weights 
and in case of a considerable number of other types 
of experience, conforms to a rule which these common- 
sense observations already suggested. The rule was 
stated in one form by Weber and in another by Fech- 
ner, and appears in modern text-books as the so-called 
"psycho-physic law." This law has been subjected in 
later years to an elaborate variety of experimental 
tests. In a very considerable region of our sensory 
experiences it has been found to remain approximately 
valid. In certain regions of our sensory experience 
it cannot be verified. In case of decidedly faint or of 
decidedly intense sensory experiences of any sense it 
appears not to hold. Where it is approximately valid 
it is so for sensory experiences of medium intensity. 

The law is that in order that differences of sensory 
experience should have, in two different cases of com- 
parison, the same value for our reacting consciousness, 
or should appear to be eqital differences, the stimjdi 
that are cotnpared in the two different cases must differ 



268 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

from 07ie anotJicj'-, not by the same absolute physical 
difference in tJieir magnitude, but by the same relative 
difference. Thus, if we suppose that, in a given region 
of sensation, a stimulus having a physical magnitude 21 
appear to have a just perceivable difference from a 
stimulus possessing the magnitude 20, then, in order 
that a stimulus of the same type, and appealing to 
the same sense, but having the magnitude 42, should 
appear just appreciably greater than another stimulus, 
this other stimulus would have to have the magni- 
tude 40. While if, again, a stimulus having a magni- 
tude 84 was to appear just less than another stimulus, 
this other stimulus would have to have a magni- 
tude 80; and so on. Or if, in case of the same 
series of sensations, stimuli of the magnitudes 10 
and 20 appear to consciousness as possessing a cer- 
tain difference, then two stimuli, possessing, other 
things being equal, the magnitudes 20 and 40, would 
produce in consciousness sensory experiences having 
appreciably as much difference, or the same differ- 
ence, as the foregoing pair of stimuli. Thus one 
pair of stimidi have the same difference for conscious- 
ness as another pair of stimuli, in case the members 
of the two pairs have the same proportionate magni- 
tude when compared together. 

§ 105. With the range of validity of this law, and 
with its apparent exceptions, we have here no space 
to deal. That it stands for a very important relation 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 269 

between our conscious discriminations of stimuli and 
the physical facts seems unquestionable. What it is 
important for us to note however in this connection 
is that the psycho-physic law, whatever else it is, 
is a laiv relating to our Mental Docility, i.e., to our 
power to acquire skill m discriminating between the 
facts of onr sensory experience. The psycho-physic 
law is treated in some discussions as a law directly 
relating to our sensations. It is often said, that 
like differences in intensity of sensation correspond 
to like proportional differences in the stimulations. 
But as a fact the experiments upon which the psycho- 
physic law is based are not and cannot be experi- 
ments upon the pure sensory experiences as they 
exist in themselves, still less upon the absolutely pure 
and isolated sensations. For the first, we never have 
any purely sensory experiences which are not woven 
into complexes that have value for our whole present 
unity of consciousness. For the rest, to compare tzvo 
sensory experierices, a7td to judge them as different, is 
to perform a specific reaction in the presence of this 
pair of experiences, that is, it is to pronounce the 
judgment " Different," or it is to make some other re- 
action which shows that the difference has value for 
consciousness. The difference is perceived when the 
reaction is accomplished. It is not perceived unless 
some such reaction is present, at least as a tendency. 
Now most experiments upon the psycho-physic law 



2/0 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

are carried on under conditions of concentrated atten- 
tion, the attention being directed to the comparison 
of the stimuli in question. In so far as the common- 
sense experiences before mentioned throw Hght upon 
the tendency which the law represents, or in so far 
as the laboratory experiments are made to approxi- 
mate to the conditions of the naive consciousness, it 
still holds true that the perception of the dijfereiice 
between two experiences takes the form of some specific 
reaction to this difference. 

Now in the present chapter we have been setting 
forth the conditions under which sensory discrimina- 
tions are learned. We have seen that these condi- 
tions favour the sensory discrimination of successive 
differences, although we can acquire the power to 
discriminate simultaneous differences. We have also 
seen that the power to discriminate successive differ- 
ences, for example, the power to observe the differ- 
ence between two weights by lifting first one and 
then immediately the other, or the power to distin- 
guish between two tones by hearing first one and 
then the other, is a power that can indeed be culti- 
vated by attention, and by training various kinds of 
reaction in the presence of the objects. The psycho- 
physic law appears now to formulate a certain limit 
to which the Docility of the organism in responding 
to finer differences in stimulation is subject. 

It has often been disputed whether the psycho-physic 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 2/1 

law is a physiological one, having to do with what hap- 
pens in the organs of sensation before the centres are 
reached, or whether it is a psychological law, having to 
do with the way in which our conscious process repre- 
sents what goes on in the world. From our present 
point of view the psycho-physic law may well be both 
physiological and psychical. It certainly has a physical 
or physiological aspect. If I am affected by two 
stimuli A and B, in proper relations of succession, / am 
able to discriminate between them in case I am able to 
perform, some act of which I am, conscious, an act due 
to the difference between them, or an act such that I re- 
spond to A iti a ivay different from the way in which I 
respond to B. If I cannot perform the act, I cannot 7nake 
the conscious discrimination. The limitation of my con- 
scious discrimination must run parallel to the Hmitation 
of my power to act. 

Now what the phenomena summed up under the 
psycho-physic law indicate is, that if you ask a man 
to react in the form of a judgment of difference, or in 
any other exactly definable form, which is subject to 
test, and if you ask him to perform this act in the 
presence of stimulations, then if the stimulations A 
and B are sufficient to produce an act indicating dis- 
criminati;on, stimulations having physical magnitudes 
other than those of A and B, must have the same 
proportional difference in order to produce the same 
result. What the facts teach is therefore that both 



2/2 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

the organism and the conscious process tend to adjust 
themselves to relative and not to absolute dijferences of 
stimuli. The tendency is so strong that no degree 
of closeness of attention and no degree of docility at 
our disposal enables us to overcome it. The law there- 
fore stands for a limitation of our docility. It also 
stands for an obviously convenient relation between 
the organism and the external world. As many physical 
stimuli are subject, in case of variations in light or 
in other physical conditions of our surroundings, 
to proportional variations in physical intensity, while 
these variations do not affect the relative importance 
of the objects that produce these stimuli when con- 
sidered in their bearing upon the organism, it is of 
course important that the kind of reaction which the 
organism makes should not be affected by these unes- 
sential variations in our environment. In other cases 
a similar teleological relation of the facts to our behav- 
iour in their presence can readily be traced. It is im- 
portant, however, to remember that the psycho-physic 
law is not a law directly relating to our sensations^ but 
is rather a law of our reactions. It is substantially the 
law that we make, within limits, the same reaction to the 
same relative variation in the magnitude of stimuli. 
The relation of the law to consciousness is simply due 
to the fact that we are conscious of a response that we 
actually tend to make, and of differences among facts, 
only in so far as we respond to these differences. If it 



DOCILITY — DIFFERENTIATION 273 

be remembered that the conscious process accompanies 
not merely our external sensory experiences, but our 
total organic reactions to these experiences, the mystery 
which has sometimes been made about the pyscho- 
physic law appears less significant. 



CHAPTER XII 

Docility 

d. the social aspect of the higher forms of 
docility ^ 

§ 1 06. Man's response to his environment is not 
merely a reaction to things, but is, and in fact pre- 
dominantly, is, a reaction to persons. There is no 
opportunity, in the present connection, to trace with 
any detail the rise and growth of our consciousness 
of the human personalities with whom we are accus- 
tomed to deal. The laws of habit and of association 
are unquestionably of importance as throwing light 
upon the way in which we come to regard certain 
objects in our environment not merely as physical 
things possessing size, movement, etc., but as objects 
endowed with an experience like our own, and pos- 
sessing a consciousness that, inaccessible as it may 
be to us, is still, in so far as we get its expressions, 
essentially intelligible and profoundly interesting to 
us. It is necessary in the present connection, without 
undertaking in the least the task of a specific social 

1 Cf. on the present topic the author's papers on " Self-consciousness, 
Social Consciousness and Nature " and on the " Anomalies of Self-con- 
sciousness" in Studies of Good and Evil (New York, \\ 

274 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 275 

psychology, to give some indication of tJie way in 
which all our Jiighcr intellectual and voluntary habits 
are affected by this our conscious interpretation of the 
inner life of our fellozvs. 

§ 107. The foundation for our whole social con- 
sciousness seems to lie in certain instincts which char- 
acterise us as social beings, and which begin to 
assume considerable prominence toward the end of 
the first year of an infant's life. These instincts 
express themselves first in reactions of general inter- 
est in the faces, in the presence, and in the doings, 
of our social fellow beings. Among these reactions 
some show great pleasure and fascination. Some, 
the reactions of bashfulness, show fear. This fear is an 
instinctive character, and in some cases may display 
itself in reactions of violent terror in the presence of 
strangers. But on the whole, more prominent, in the 
life of a normally tended infant, is pleasurable reac- 
tion at the sight of people. It is unquestionable that, 
from the very first, these instincts are subject to the 
regular processes that everywhere determine our do- 
cility. Our social environment is a constant source 
of numerous sensory pleasures, and by association 
becomes interesting to us accordingly. But, in addi- 
tion to the pleasures of sense which are due to our 
human companions, there are, no doubt, from the first, 
deep instinctive and hereditary sources of interest in 
the activities of human beings. On the basis of the 



2/6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

general social interests, there appear more special 
instincts, amongst which the most prominent is the 
complex of instincts suggested by the name Imita- 
tion.^ It is by imitation that the child learns its 
language. It is by imitation that it acquires all the 
social tendencies that make it a tolerable member of 
society. Its imitativeness is the source of an eager 
and restless activity which the child pursues for years 
under circumstances of great difficulty, and even when 
the processes involved seem to be more painful than 
pleasurable. Imitativeness remains with us through 
life. It attracts less of our conscious attention in our 
adult years, but is present in ways that the psycholo- 
gist is able to observe even in case of people who 
suppose themselves not to be imitative. 

This human imitativeness assumes very notable 
forms in excited crowds of people, in what the recent 
psychologists have called in general " the mob." A 
mob, in the technical sense, is any company of per- 
sons whose present set of brain involves the abandon- 
ment of such habits as have most determined their 
customary individual choices, and the assumption, for 
the moment, merely of certain generalised modes of 
reaction which are of an emotional, a socially plastic, 
and a decidedly imitative type. Under the influence 
of such social conditions, the members of the mob 

1 Cf. Professor Baldwin's Mental Development in the Child and in the 
Race, especially the second volume of that work. 



HIGHER P^ORMS OF DOCILITY 277 

tnay perform acts of the type before referred to, acts- 
which seem to the casual observer quite out of char- 
acter in view of the training and of the ordinary 
opinions of the people concerned. Outside of the 
mob, the imitative reactions appear in all the phe- 
nomena of fashion and of transitory custom, such as 
any popular craze of the day, or the success of any 
favourite song, opera, or novel, may daily illustrate. 
The most of people's political opinions, the most of 
their religious creeds, the most of their social judg- 
ments, are very highly imitative in their origin. 

§ 108. Side by side with the social processes of the 
imitative type appear another group of reactions prac- 
tically inseparable from the former, but in character 
decidedly contrasted with them. These are the phe- 
nomena of Social Opposition and of the love for con- 
trasting one's self with one's fellows in behavionr, in 
opinion^ or in power. These phenomena of social con- 
trast and opposition have an unquestionably instinctive 
basis. They appear very early in childhood. They 
last in most people throughout life. They may take 
extremely hostile and formidable shapes. In their nor- 
mal expression they constitute one of the most valuable 
features of any healthy social activity. This fact may 
be illustra'ted by any lively conversation or discussion. 

As a rule, the acts that express this fondness for 
social contrast, and for opposing one's self to the social 
environment are, in their origin, secondary to the imita- 



2/8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tive acts. It is true that the instmctive basis for them 
appears quite as early as do the manifestations of the 
imitative instincts. And since this fondness for opposi- 
tion is in part based upon the elemental emotions of the 
type expressed in anger, obstinacy, and unwillingness 
to be interfered with, the instinctive basis for the type 
of action here in question may be said to be manifest 
even earlier in infancy than is the case with the imitar 
tive reactions. But while the instinctive basis of oppo- 
sition is primitive, the social acts that can express such 
instincts must be acquired. And in order to contrast 
one's self with one's social environment it is necessary, 
in general, first to learn how to do something that has 
social significance. I cannot oppose you by my speech 
unless I already know how to talk. I cannot rival you 
as a musician unless I already understand music. I 
cannot endeavour to get the better of a political rival 
unless I already understand politics. But speech and 
music and politics have to be learned by imitation. 
Hence the social reactions which express the fondness 
for contrast and opposition must on the whole follow in 
their development the social reactions dependent upon 
imitation. This accounts for that close weaving to- 
gether of the two types of functions, of which we have 
already spoken. The playful child already seizes what- 
ever little arts he has acquired by imitation to express 
his wilfulness, or to develop his own devices, or to dis- 
play himself to his environment. And, on the other 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 2/9 

hand, a form of wilfulness, or of obstinacy, in an already 
highly intelligent being, may lead to a deliberately 
painstaking process of imitation, such as happens when- 
ever an ambitious artist devotes himself long to training 
in order that thereby he may get the better of his rivals. 
In brief, the preservation of a happy balance between 
the imitative functions and those that emphasise social 
contrasts and oppositions forms the basis for every 
higher type of mental activity. And the entire process 
of conscious education involves the deliberate appeal to 
the docility of these tvoo types of social instijicts. For 
whatever else we teach to a social being we teach him 
to imitate. And whatever use we teach him to make of 
his social imitations in his relations with other men, we 
are obliged at the same time to teach him to assert him- 
self, in some sort of way, in contrast with his fellows, 
and by virtue of the arts which he possesses. 

The full consideration of the social value of imitative- 
ness and of the love of social contrast and opposition, 
would carry us wholly beyond our present limits. What 
we are concerned to notice, in this elementary study of 
psychology, is that the nature of these fimctions pro- 
foundly affects the structure and the development of the 
processes known as thought a7td reasoning. We are 
also concerned merely to mention a fact into whose 
adequate consideration we cannot hope to enter, the 
fact, namely, that all tJie functions which constitute self- 
consciousness shoiv themselves outwardly iti social re- 



28o OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

actions, that is, in dealings with other real or ideal 
personages, and are, in our own minds, profoundly related 
to and inseparable from our social consciousjiess. 

§ 109. To specify more exactly the matters to which 
reference has thus been made : what is called thought 
consists (as has already been pointed out) of a series 
of menial processes that unqitestiojiably tend to express 
themselves in characteristic motor reactions. Many of 
these reactions notoriously take the form of using, of 
applying, and of combining words. Now the reasons 
why our thinking process should so largely depend 
upon using words have often been discussed by psy- 
chologists, but at first sight they may appear to the ele- 
mentary student of psychology somewhat puzzling. The 
general solution of the problem lies in the fact that 
words are the expressiotis of certain reactions that we 
have acquired when tve were in social relations to our 
fellows. If we once understand how these social rela- 
tions determine that character of our consciousness 
which essentially belongs to all thinking, we become 
able to see why verbal associations and habits should 
be so prominent in connection with all the thinking 
processes. We shall also be able to see what is fre- 
quently neglected by psychologists, namely, the possi- 
bility that processes of thought should on occasion appear 
dissociated from verbal expression, although never disso- 
ciated from tendencies to action which have a social 
origin essentially similar to that of language. 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 28 1 

Our words are first learned as part of our social inter- 
course with our fellows. As recent students of the 
psychology of the language of childhood have pointed 
out, words cannot be said at the outset to express to 
a child any exact abstract ideas. They are at first, 
as Wundt and his school have well insisted, rather 
the expressions of feelings than the embodiments of 
thought.^ The whole vocal life of infancy is primarily 
an expression of feeling. In social relationships it 
later becomes to a child associated with his socially 
fascinating feelings, with the sense of companionship, 
with his joy in the power to make sounds which others 
admire, and to imitate sounds which he hears others 
make. But now, in time, these expressions of the 
child's feelings become associated not only with social 
situations and dehghts, but with objects and deeds 
observed. The social utility of taking advantage of 
these associations, is emphasised, in the child's training, 
by the behaviour, and by the deliberate efforts at in- 
struction in language, which he meets with in his elders. 
At length a stage comes when language is the ex- 
pression of the child's wish, at once to characterise 
objects present in his experience, and to appeal intel- 
ligibly to the minds of his fellows. Now these two 
aspects of the language processes are never to be 
separated from one another, either in the life of child- 
hood or in our much later rational development. A 

^ See Wundt's Volkerpsychologie, Vol. I, " Die Sprache." 



282 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

word, a phrase, a discourse, is always at once a response 
to certain facts in the outer or inner world which we 
attempt to characterise, and an appeal to the conscious- 
ness of our fellow. It is the latter aspect which gives 
language its primary practical importance. Language 
is not a direct adjustment to the facts apart from the 
purpose of communication. It is the purpose of com- 
munication that alone makes language essentially sig- 
nificant as a part of our mental equipment. But in 
view of this fact it is obvious that language acquires its 
value as a means of characterising facts through pro- 
cesses which appear, ifz the mind of one who learns lan- 
guage, in the form of a long-continued, a laborious, and 
generally a fascinating process of cotnparing his own 
way of using words with the ways employed by other 
people. From the time when a child plays at imi- 
tating his nurse's words, or at hearing his own babble 
imitated, to the time when, perhaps, as a lawyer, he 
adjusts his arguments to the requirements of judges 
and juries, and to the criticisms of an opponent, he 
constantly adjusts his reactions, as he speaks, to the 
reactions of other people, by comparing his own way of 
behaviour with the behaviour of others. Such compari- 
son involves inevitably both of the two great social 
motives before emphasised. That is, it involves both 
the motives of imitation, pure and simple, and that love 
of social contrast which has before been emphasised. 
But now what is the inevitable result of all such 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 283 

activities ? It is that the one who makes such social 
comparison becomes veiy higJily conscious of the details 
of his own ads, and of the criticisms that other peo- 
ple are making upon these acts, and of the feeHngs 
which these acts arouse both in himself and in others. 
But now it is at the same time the case that the acts 
of which one becomes conscious are also acts which 
one is also seeking to adjust to objects as well as to 
social judgments. The result of this twofold adjustment 
is precisely the kind of consciousness which constitutes 
thijiking. For thinking differs from nalfve action chiefly 
in this : When we act in naive fashion, we are espe- 
cially conscious of the objects to which we adjust our- 
selves, and of the feelings of success or of failure, that 
is, of satisfaction or of restlessness, of pleasure or of 
pain, that accompany these acts. Of the details of our 
acts we are not in such cases conscious, although our 
consciousness of our objects is unquestionably depend- 
ent upon the performance of our acts. Thus, one who 
seeks food is very imperfectly aware of how he moves 
his legs or his arms in walking or in grasping ; but he 
is aware of his images of the food, and of his relatively 
satisfactory or unsatisfactory efforts to obtain it. The 
reason why the details of our acts do not come in such 
cases clearly to consciousness is dependent upon the 
fact that our sensory experiences of the objects in ques- 
tion are prominent, while our sensory experiences of 
our acts, just in so far as the acts have become habit- 



284 OUTLINES OF PSYCFIOLOGY 

ual, tend to be too swift for consciousness to follow ; 
while only our feelings remain, amongst our internal 
experiences, as the prominent accompaniments of the 
act. But, on the other hand, one who thinks makes it 
part of his ideal to be conscious of how he behaves in the 
presence of things. And this he does because the social 
comparison of his acts with the acts of other people 
not only controls the formation of his acts, but has 
made his observation of his own acts an ideal. For so 
far as he is imitating Others, he is fascinated by the 
adjustment of his behaviour to the behaviour of others. 
So far as he is dwelling upon social conflicts and con- 
trasts he is displaying his own acts to the other people j 
and so he is conscious that they are observing him, and 
is desirous that they should do so. In consequence, the 
social conditions, tinder which language is acquired pro- 
duce the tJiinking process, just because it is of the 
essence of the thinking process that we should become 
aware of how our acts are adjusted to our objects. 

The acts in which we express our thinking are not,, 
however, exclusively confined to the process of using 
words or of combining them. The drawing of a scien- 
tific diagram, the construction of a work of art, the 
performance of an experiment, the adjustment of the 
playing of one's musical instrument to the criticisms 
of one's musical rival, or to the guidance of the con- 
ductor of an orchestra — all these are activities which 
involve thinking processes. They do so because they 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 285 

are social adjustments of the type now in question, 
that is, social adjiLstnicnts, involving imitations a?id 
social contrasts, and including the consciousness of how 
one performs the act, and so of Jiozv it is adjusted to the 
ideal. 

§ 1 10. Such, then, is the general character of thought, 
namely, that it is our consciousness of an act or of a 
series of acts adjusted to an object, in s?tch wise as fit- 
tingly to represent that object, or to portray it, or to 
chamcterise it, and in such wise that the one who thinks 
is conscious of the nature of his act. Hence it will 
follow that, all the special processes of thinking, such 
as those usually discriminated as conception, judg- 
ment, and reasoning, exemplify this general character 
of the thinking process, and result from the effects of 
social stimulations. The process of contrasting my 
own acts with my fellow's acts, and in consequence 
of contrasting my own views with what I regard as the 
ideas of my fellow, this is the process which is respon- 
sible for that kind of consciousness which appears in 
all of our thoughtful activities. 

Let us exemplify these considerations by a few words 
about each of the thinking processes which have just 
been mentioned. The process called Conception, or 
the formation of Abstract General Ideas, is rightly re- 
garded as essential to the thinking process. General 
ideas are the ideas which we associate with those words 
that have an apphcation to any one of many individual 



286 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

cases or situations. The word "man" or "horse" is a 
word of general application. The knowledge of what 
this word means involves a possession of a general idea 
of men or of horses. Now of what mental material 
does such an idea consist ? When it is a lively, or a 
highly conscious idea, it unquestionably involves, in all 
cases, and in one aspect, some kind of mental imagery. 
This imagery may, in visualising people, take predomi- 
nantly the form of mental pictures of representative 
men or of representative horses. It may in some minds 
take the form of vague mental pictures corresponding 
to what one might call " composite photographs," such 
as the mind would seem to have formed from retaining 
in imagination the characters common to many individ- 
ual horses or men, while forgetting the characters 
wherein various individuals differ from one another. 
But it is, nevertheless, possible for one who is not a 
visualiser to have as clear an idea of what he means by 
"man" or "horse" as the visualising man possesses. 
And our more developed abstract ideas, such as mathe- 
matical abstractions, or such as our conception of jus- 
tice, involve mental processes to whose portrayal visual 
imagery is extremely inadequate. One comes nearer to 
dwelling upon the essential characteristics which the ab- 
stract ideas of a horse or of a man must possess when 
one observes that wJioever knows what a horse or man in 
general is, knows of some kind of act which it is fitting 
to perform iit the presence of any object of the class in 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 287 

question. This act is of such a nature as either directly 
portrays the characters of the object, or else in some 
fashion tends, if expressed outwardly, to convey to an- 
other the idea of man or of horse that one possesses. 
The name " man " or " horse," the word-image associ- 
ated with any such object, is itself a part of a well- 
known act by which one may react in the presence of 
an object of the class in question. For naming objects 
is one way of responding to their presence. And the 
name has value for consciousness, not merely because 
it happens to be associated with the object, but because 
it is associated with the object as my fitting and proper 
way of treating the object or of reacting to its presence, 
especially in case I wish to inform another of the fact 
that I have seen man or horse. But, in addition to the 
use of the name, the one who possesses the correct 
general idea of the objects is able to perform numer- 
ous other fitting acts in presence of any object of the 
class in question. At the moment when he brings 
to clearer consciousness his general idea of man or 
horse, he either remembers some such act — some act 
by which he could fittingly characterise his own usual 
relations to man or horse, — or some act by means of 
which he could imitate or portray (much as, in the 
gesture language, any one portrays an object by an 
imitative sign) an aspect of the nature of man or of 
horse ; or else, if he performs no such act at the mo- 
ment, he has a feeling of confidence that he could perform 



288 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

such an act, that he could tell himself, if he chose, more 
clearly what he means by man or by horse. Such a 
feeling of confidence is a feeling similar to those feel- 
ings of familiarity earlier described. It is a feeling of 
the relatively quiescent type. Such a feeling frequently 
takes the place in our minds of any more explicit effort 
consciously to understand what we mean by a familiar 
word ; so that often what we call the understanding of 
a word is simply the hearing of the word, attended by a 
feeling of familiarity, and of confidence that we could, 
if necessary, proceed to give further accounts or por- 
trayals of the nature of the object whereof the word is 
the general name. But as soon as we proceed from 
such feelings to the more concrete act of conception, 
our general ideas, if they become explicit, must take the 
form of further tendencies to conduct, of tendencies to por- 
tray or to describe or to depict the nature of the object by 
a fitting series of reactions, such as would be suitable, on 
our part, in the presence of any object of the class 
in question, and such as would be suitable to portray to 
another our general ideas. 

§ III. Our general ideas, whether exact or inexact, 
stand therefore for certain tnental attitudes assumed 
toward any object of the class of which we have the 
general idea. Any such mental attitude is accom- 
panied by imagery, and the mental imagery may be 
so prominent that certain people, especially visualisers, 
suppose that they sufficiently describe their conscious 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 289 

States when they characterise their general ideas as 
images, more or less vague, of typical objects of the 
class in question. But, as we pointed out in discussing 
our mental imagery, our mental images of outer objects 
are never to be divorced from our reactions. When we 
have lively images, we tend to express our whole atti- 
tude toward their objects in fitting behaviour, as the 
child, when playing with imaginary comrades, or 
telling stories, illustrates. Moreover, whoever has a 
general idea of a class of things, is able to show yon 
that he has a correct general idea only in so far as this 
idea expresses itself in fitting acts. Whoever believes 
himself to have a correct general idea of a tiger, 
merely because he has an image of a tiger, has only 
to ask himself whether his general idea of a tiger is 
such as to permit him to believe that when you meet 
a tiger you pat him on the head and ask him to give 
you his paw, in order to see that his image of a tiger 
possesses what Professor James has so skilfully called 
a " fringe " — a fringe which at once excludes any such 
disposition to deal with a tiger as one does with a 
pet dog. One's general idea of a tiger includes states 
of feeling, which may indeed be represented to mo- 
mentary consciousness only in the form of a general 
sense of familiarity with the idea or with the word 
"tiger," or only by the general confidence that, if one 
were asked to portray the nature of a tiger, one could 
in some respect fittingly do so. But these feelings of 
u 



290 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

quiescence in the presence of the familiar name or 
image are themselves indications of tendencies which 
tell one how one ought to act in the presence of an 
object of the class in question. If one's confidence, 
that one's general idea is a good one, is well founded, 
and if one then allows one's general idea of the object 
in question to become explicit and fully developed, 
instead of remaining a mere fragmentary image or 
word-memory, then one discovers that the whole general 
idea involves what one may as well call " a plan of 
action,'' that is, a way of behaviour which is fitting to 
characterise aiid portray an object of the class in qiiestio7i. 
§ 112. The fact that too many psychological ac- 
counts of the nature of general ideas have resulted 
from confining psychological attention to the frag- 
mentary images which may appear at any stage of 
the development or expression in consciousness of a 
general idea, instead of considering the total mental 
process which is needed in order to portray with 
relative completeness any general idea whatever, is 
responsible for the result that the traditional account 
of general ideas has usually missed this, their relation 
to our conduct. But if this relation exists, if every 
complete general idea is a cojtscioii-s plan of action, fitted 
for the characterisation and portrayal of the nature of 
that of which we have a general idea, the psychological 
question regarding the genesis of general ideas is 
simply the question as to how zve could become clearly 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 29 1 

conscious of such plans of actmi. For, as we pointed \ 

out above, we are not usually clearly conscious of pre- \ 

cisely those acts which have become most habitual, unless 
special conditions call our attention to their constitution. 

Our answer to the question thus raised has already 
been stated. The fact that all our general ideas have 
been formed under social conditions, and that the ways 
in which we describe, portray, and characterise things 
have been throughout determined by motives of com- 
munication, by a disposition to imitate the behaviour of 
our fellows, and by a disposition to compare our own 
mental attitudes with theirs, this fact sufficiently ex- 
plains why the social contrasts and comparisons in 
question have tended to make us and keep us conscious 
not only of our oivn objects, but of our own modes of 
rational behaviour in their pirsence. 

Meanwhile, the essentially imitative character of all 
complex general ideas appears in all our most thought- 
ful processes, namely, in our more elaborate scientific 
general ideas. Such general ideas are best expressed 
by drawing diagrams, or by going through the processes 
of a scientific experiment, or by writing formulas on a 
blackboard, or, finally, by describing objects in well- 
ordered series of descriptive words. From this point of 
view one might declare that all our higher conceptions , 
just in proportion as they are thoughtful and definite, 
involve conscious imitations of things. And these con- 
ceptions are general, merely because the fashion of imi- 



292 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tation that we employ in the presence of one object will 
regularly be applicable to a great number of objects. 

Our numerical ideas illustrate this principle very well. 
They are more or less abbreviated expressions of the 
motor activity of counting, and of the results of this 
activity. The geometrical conception of a circle as a 
curve that can be constructed by fixing one end of a 
straight line, by leaving the other free, and by allowing 
this end to rotate in a plane, is another instance of a 
conception that is identical with our memory of a cer- 
tain mode of portrayal by which a circle can be recon- 
structed. In brief, ive have exact conceptions of things hi 
so far as we know how the things ctre made, or how they 
can be imitative ly reconstructed through our portrayals. 
Where our power to imitate ceases, our power definitely 
to conceive ceases also. All science is thus an effort 
to describe facts, to set over against the real world an 
imitation of it. Hence the vanity of endeavouring to 
describe the process of conception merely in terms of 
images, without remembering that mental imagery, 
when definite, is always related to our action. But it 
is ou.r social life that has made us conscious of our 
actions, and that has thus taught us how to form abstract 
ideas. 

§ 113. The mental process called Judgment is the 
second essential aspect of the thinking process. While 
judgment involves many other aspects, its essential 
feature lies in the fact that, when we judge, we accept 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 293 

or reject a given proposed portrayal of objects as adequate, 
or as fitting for its own purpose. The general concep- 
tion, as we have just seen, is a portrayal, which one 
may compare to a photograph of a man. The act of 
judgment is comparable to the act whereby one to 
whom the photographer sends the proofs of a pho- 
tograph, accepts or rejects the photograph as a worthy 
representation of the object in question. But our 
consciousness regarding the acceptance or rejection 
of proposed portrayals of objects has become critical, 
has come to involve a sharp distinction between truth 
and error, because we have so ofteji compared our jtidg- 
ments with those of otir felloivs, and have so often 
criticised, accepted, or rejected their expressions, their 
attitudes toward things. Here again the conditions upon 
which the social consciousness depends have proved 
necessary to the formation of our thought. 

§ 114. The process of reasoning, the third aspect 
of the thinking process, is in general the process of cofi- 
sidering the results of proposed cojiceptions ajid judg- 
ments, of taking them, so to speak, as if they were 
themselves original objects, and of reading off from 
some new point of view the results which these concep- 
tions or judgments, when once accepted, involve. The 
reasoning -process is often regarded by students of 
psychology as in the main a case of the association 
of ideas. And that associations are concerned in 
every step of the reasoning process is indisputable. 



294 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Conceptions and judgments inevitably express habitual 
activities. Thought is a result of experience, and 
nothing appears in the thinking process which is not 
profoundly influenced, from the psychological point of 
view, by the laws of habit. But to regard a train 
of reasoning as merely an associative train of images 
is indeed to emphasise a true aspect of a train of 
reasoning, but is to neglect its most important aspect. 
So too, as we have before asserted, all thinking and 
so all reasoning, involves assimilation (§ 96). But we 
have also said that thought is much more than mere 
assimilation. As a fact, every act of reasoning in- 
volves new reactions of our own in the presence of a 
situation which we get before us as the result of 
former acts. The essence of reasoning, as of the 
whole thinking process, is that I am not merely con- 
cerned with the way in which images float before me, 
but with my consciousness of what I am doing with | 
these images, or with the objects that the images sug- 
gest. When I reason, the object before me for con- 
sideration is principally represented by images of the 
results of former acts. My reasoning process involves 
a new judgment based upon these former acts. 

Thus, if I am constructing a diagram, and upon 
a right line have placed a point B to the right of 
point A, and have placed a point C to the right of 
point B, I so far actually portray a situation which I 
may regard as representing the nature of some series 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 295 

of objects. If, hereupon, I observe that my construc- 
tion involves as a fact that C, being to the right of 
B, must by so much the more be to the right of A, 
and if I hereupon note that this must hold true of 
the object which the diagram represents, then I rea- 
son. My reasoning thus consists in finding out from 
some new point of viciv zvhat I have meant by my 
former acts and jiLcigments. We bring out the essence 
of the reasoning process when, in an appeal to a 
careless child who has done some mischief, we say, 
" See what you have done." Reasoning is thus the 
reading off of the result of our former thoughtful acts 
from some new point of view. But it indeed involves 
no essentially new mental tendency. It is a con- 
tinuation of the consciousness which characterises the 
whole thinking process, only of this consciousness on 
a higher level. 

As reasoning involves a constantly more and more 
elaborate consciousness of the nature and resjdts of onr 
own action so again we see, from the whole history of 
the development of the reason amongst men, that 
reasoning is a consequence of social situations, and espe- 
cially of the process of comparing various opinions and 
connections of opinion, as these have grown up amongst 
men. The whole method of the reasoning process has 
come to the consciousness of men as the result of dis- 
putation, that is, of processes whereby men have com- 
pared together their various ways of portraying things, 



296 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

and of taking accounts of the results of their own 
actions. Nobody learns to reason except after other people 
have pointed out to him how they view his attempts to 
give his own acts of thought connection, and to proceed 
from one act to another. Like the thinking process in 
general, the reasoning process develops out of condi- 
tions which at the outset involve a very rich, and in 
fact predominant presence of feelings and of complex 
emotions. That is, reasonings have resulted from what 
were at first decidedly passionate contrasts of opinion ; 
and the dispassionate reason has grown up upon the 
basis of decidedly emotional efforts of men to persuade 
other men to assume their own fashions of conduct, and 
their own self-conscious view of how their various acts 
were connected together. If the process of conception 
is the formation of a plan of conduct, the process of 
reasoning results from trying so to portray this plan as to 
persuade other men to assimie it. Persuasion and con- 
troversy, upon earlier stages of mental development, are 
always associated with passionate vehemence. The 
ineffectiveness of mere passion to attain its own social 
ends, the growth of ingenuity in the process of per- 
suasion, and the gradual elaboration of social habits, 
formed through the successful bringing of men to agree- 
ment, — such are the motives upon which the develop- 
ment of the reasoning process has depended. 

§ 115. It remains here very briefly to characterise 
the highest and most complex of all the intellectual 



HIGHER FORMS OF DOCILITY 297 

processes, namely that one which has to do with what 
is called our " Self-consciousness " in general, that is, 
the consciousness which the Ego, the Self, possesses of 
its own life, activities, and plans. The Self of any man 
comes to consciousness only in contrast with other selves. 
There is no reason why one should be aware of his 
whole plan of life, or of his personal character, or of 
the general connections amongst his various habits, or 
of the value of his own life, or of any of the features 
and attributes which our present consciousness ascribes 
to the Self, unless he has had occasion to compare his 
behaviour, his feelings, and his ideals, with those of 
other men. It is true that when developed, this Self 
includes amongst its possessions all the states of con- 
sciousness that make up the inner life of which we 
spoke in our opening paragraphs, that inner life which 
we conceived as in some sense inaccessible to, and sun- 
dered from, the inner life of anybody else. But there 
is no reason why these states of consciousness should 
form, from our own point of view, a world by themselves, 
unless we had some world of other facts to compare 
and contrast them with. And the whole evidence of 
our social consciousness is to the effect that it is by 
virtue of our ideas of other people, and of their minds 
and conscious states, that we have come to form the 
conception of our own inner life as, in its wholeness, 
distinct from theirs. 

The conception of the so-called Empirical Self, that 



298 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

is, of the Self of our ordinary experience, is one which 
we find to be especially centred about certain of our 
most important organic sensations, and also centred 
about those feelings of pleasure, pain, restlessness, and 
quiescence, which are most persistent and prominent in 
our lives. But the mere possession of these organic 
sensations and feelings is not sufficient to explain why 
we regard them as peculiarly belonging to the Self. It is 
only when we see the importance that our social life 
with our fellows has given to these organic sensations 
that we recognise how we first have come to contrast 
our own experience with what we for various reasons 
conceive to be the inner experiences of other people, 
and then, by virtue of the prominence which our social 
contrasts and oppositions give to these organic sensa- 
tions, have come to regard them as especially the imme- 
diate expression of our independence, and of that which 
keeps us apart from all other selves. 

That the Self comes to consciousness in normal 
cases only in connection with organised plans of con- 
duct, is obvious from what has already been said. Our 
social self-consciousness leads us to form such plans, 
and to compare them with those of other people. Our 
consciousness of ourselves as personalities is there- 
fore simply an extreme instance of that relation be- 
tween social consciousness and the higher intellectual 
development which we have already set forth in our, 
account of the general nature of thought. 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Conditions of Mental Initiative 

§ II 6. In treating of docility we have everywhere 
had to take account of the presence of novelty both 
in our experience and in our conduct. But on the 
whole, such novelty has thus far been treated as some- 
thing due, in the main, to the external stimuli, and to 
the order in which they come, A new habit, as we 
have said, may arise because certain stimuli A, B, C, D, 
act upon the organism. These stimuli have never 
been thus together before. The resulting brain pro- 
cesses, a, b, c, d, excited together, tend by the law of 
habit to become connected through repetition, so that 
they are more easily aroused. 

We have indeed observed that, when new habits are 
formed, not all that occurs can be said to be due either 
to the external stimuli or to their repetition. For there 
is a certain internally conditioned tendency on the part 
of the gradually improving habit to grow more defi- 
nite, to lose its useless elements, to involve less diffuse 
discharges. This tendency, as we have said, is due 
to the general adaptability of the organism. We left 
it to biological science further to explain the existence 

299 



300 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

of such tendencies to the elimination of the unfit con- 
stituents of habits. But the rest of the process of 
the acquisition and the welding of habits involves 
features that were, as thus far considered, of one gen- 
eral type. This is the type which determines our 
whole docility, both in its intellectual and in its vol- 
untary aspects. Assimilation, as we found, tends to 
minimise whatever novelties new disturbances intro- 
duce into the organism. Even the differentiation of 
conscious states we also found to be an exemplifica- 
tion of the law of habit. For differentiation is due to 
the fact that habits of successive action, when once 
acquired, determine our consciousness of the differ- 
ences of simultaneous facts. The processes of the 
attention have appeared as further examples of the 
law of habit. The organisation of conduct follows 
the same line. So far there has therefore seemed to 
be no room left for any normal initiative which could 
be said to be due in the main to the organism or, on 
its psychical side, to the mind. 

Yet as our introduction pointed out, there is at 
least the appearance of mental initiative in the phe- 
nomena of human ingenuity, in the acts which tradition 
has regarded as due to free-will, and in the processes 
of " self -activity " generally. This appearance we now 
need in conclusion to examine more carefully. We 
should come to the subject with no prejudice in favour 
of finding that this appearance of mental initiative 



I 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 30 1 

either is or is not a well-founded appearance. We 
ought neither to be surprised to find the processes in 
question reducible to those which govern our docility, 
nor unwilling to admit that in some respects they are 
not thus reducible. 

Modern biological theory, by its recognition of what 
have been called " spontaneous variations " as factors 
in evolution has, at all events, prepared the way for the 
recognition of the possible presence in the psycholo- 
gist's world of tendencies zvJnch are essentially disposed 
to the prodiiction of novel forms of conduct, such as the 
environment does not wholly predetermine, and to the 
formation of novel combinations of mental processes, 
such as previous habits have not wholly rendered nec- 
essary. That such relative novelties should be pos- 
sible in the psychologist's world, is in itself no more 
surprising than that variations of stature, of protective 
colouring, or of inherited functions, should occur in 
the world that the zoologist studies. Certainly a gen- 
eral view of the place which beings with minds occupy 
in the physical world strongly suggests that their organ- 
isms may especially have significance as places for the 
initiation of more or less novel types of activity. That 
such novelty does not mean the absence of law, we 
have already pointed out. 

We do not expect that the psychologist will ever be 
interested in events whose relations to previous events 
he regards as reducible to no sort of rule. Every 



302 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

science studies its facts for the sake of iinding them 
instances that conform to rule. But nature furnishes 
us, even in the inorganic world, with numerous instances 
of what are called " critical points," viz., points where 
one kind of process ends, and a process of a decidedly 
distinct kind appears quite suddenly to begin. The 
advance of scientific theory does, indeed, depend upon 
discovering that, even at these critical points, there 
is no absolute discontinuity in the physical processes 
involved. But this fact does not deprive the critical 
points of their scientific interest. By so much the 
more might we expect to find that, in the development 
of a creature with a mind, there are indeed critical 
points, — places where something decidedly novel be- 
gins to appear ; and where this novelty is not wholly 
determined by the relations between the organism and 
its environment, but is also in part determined by fac- 
tors which are due to the organism itself, and which 
are not wholly reducible to the laws governing our 
docility. That such critical points in the development 
of an organism or of a mind involve no absolute dis- 
continuities, we shall unquestionably admit. But that 
fact need not deprive the phenomena of mental initia- 
tive of their very considerable interest. 

§ 1 1 7. We have heretofore spoken of the instincts, 
which lie at the basis of the development of our con-^ 
duct, as if they were finished products of heredity. Wt 
have pointed out that, when external experiences arousl 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 303 

these instincts, the result is the performance of actions 
which leave traces in our central nervous system, and 
which therefore tend to the formation of habits. But, 
as a fact, the phenomena of the appearance of instinct, 
either in infancy or later in the course of our develop- 
ment, are not so simple as this general formula would in- 
dicate. In general, our most important instincts appear 
slowly, bit by bit, not as at all finished tendencies to 
specific kinds of reaction, but as at first crude and 
awkward tendencies in the general direction of a given 
kind of action. The unfinished form in which the 
instincts appear in all the higher vertebrates seems to 
be of great importance for the development of the 
individual animal. It gives opportunities to train the 
individual to special adaptations to his environment, 
such as are indicated by the special circumstances in 
which he finds himself. Thus, the aquatic bird may 
have to learn, and that somewhat slowly, its first acts 
of swimming. And still more obviously the human 
infant spends a long time in training the preliminary 
stages that lead it on the way toward creeping, climb- 
ing, and walking. The reader of Miss Shinn's 
elaborate and highly instructive monograph on The 
Development of a Child will find in her account a 
remarkably minute discussion of the phenomena that 
appear in the case of the infant whom she studied. 
Every one of the acts that finally resulted in the attain- 
ment of the power to creep, to climb, and to walk, was 



304 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

very slowly reached as the result of a training whose 
details were nowhere predetermined by heredity, while 
on the other hand, every step of the process was indeed 
predetermined by hereditary constitution to tend, in the 
normal child, toward a result that would give it, under 
the circumstances of its individual life, the powers of 
locomotion suited to a human being. In consequence, 
the development of the individual child, with regard 
to such activities as those of locomotion, is at every 
step subject to such modifications as tend to adapt the 
child to its individual surroundings . The child does 
not possess its instinctive adaptations in any finished 
form, nor even in such form that habits, having a defi- 
nite character, can at all rapidly be acquired. On the 
contrary, the early habits, in case of such complex 
processes as those of locomotion, appear for a long 
time in the form of very gradual and awkward acts, 
that do indeed, in some measure, adjust the child to its 
environment, but for a long time leave this adjustment 
very poor and ineffective. 

§ ii8. The same principle seems to hold true with 
regard to all the instincts upon whose modification and 
gradual training all our higher rational habits depend. 
TJie higher we are in the scale of mental existence, the 
slozver is the pt^ocess of learning to adapt ourselves to the 
environmetit, the more awkward are the intermediate 
stages, lying between the first signs that we possess a 
given instinctive tendency, and the fitting expression 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 305 

of the modifications of this instinctive tendency in the 
form of definite conduct. Hence the long continued 
awkwardness of the growing boy and youth. Hence 
the long apprenticeship through which many forms of 
professional skill and artistic ability have to pass. 
That, in the course of such a development, there should 
be a constant tendency to the appearance of variations of 
individual conduct, zuhose precise details are not prede- 
termined by heredity, and yet are not easily to be ex- 
plained merely in terms of docility, is fairly plain ; for if 
our instinctive tendencies come to light only slowly as 
the nervous centres grow toward maturity, the ex- 
ternal expressions of our conduct will be determined 
not merely by what happens to the organism nor by 
what the organism has inherited, but also by the higJily 
individual and nnpredictable phenomena of the grozvth 
of the nervous centres themselves during our early life. 

As a fact, the brain of man which seems to be pro- 
vided at birth with all its neurons, develops for a long 
time after birth, and especially during the first seven 
years of life, constantly new connections, structural and 
functional, amongst its various parts. The formation of 
these connections is determined not merely by the in- 
herited tendencies of the organism, nor yet wholly by 
the laws- of habit, but by the circumstances of grozvth. 
These circumstances are unquestionably affected by the 
actual conduct of the organism in question. But they 
are not in such wise determined by it as the habits are 

X 



306 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

determined by it in previous behaviour. It follows that 
there is a factor, hitherto neglected in our account, — a 
factor which tends to explain the appearance of unpre- 
dictable variation in the conduct of an immature organ- 
ism of our own type. This factor is the organic growth. 
So far as this organic growth includes the appearance, 
at certain stages, of decidedly new instincts, such as 
those which appear at puberty, the phenomena have 
already been excluded, by our initial definition, from 
those phenomena of variability which concern us here. 
But in so far as the phenomena are determined by 
the growth of nervous centres and of nervous con- 
nections which are all the while undergoing train- 
ing in accordance with the laws of habit, the con- 
sequences will appear in a type of variation such 
as our general account has already characterised. 
That is, the results will appear in the form of a 
modification of habits in directions zvhich are on the 
whole adaptive in their character, while they are not 
wholly to be explained on the basis of previo2is instincts, 
or as mere phenomena of docility. The variations which 
determine the gradual organisation of the movements 
of the creeping child seem to belong in a considerable 
measure under this head. 

§ 119. But closely associated with these processes 
there are others, whose significance for our whole 
organic life is very great, although they seem to be 
rather too generally neglected in theoretical accounts of 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 307 

the development of our conduct What especially at- 
tracts our attention, in following the development of the 
creeping child, is the fact that it persists in a great 
7ininber of its still unadaptive movemejtts ^ ijt a great 
number of its still useless actions, despite their inefficacy. 
As Miss Shinn expresses the results of her own observa- 
tions in the case of some of these phenomena, the child 
seemed to take delight, or to persist, in certain pro- 
cesses, because of the iujier impulse to try them again 
and again. 

Professor Baldwin, in his work on Mefital Develop- 
ment in the Child and in the Race has done no little 
service by laying stress upon the importance of such 
"try, try, again " activities for the development of imita- 
tive and of other intelligent functions. Now all such 
actions may unquestionably be regarded as due to in- 
stinctive tendencies. But the general instinct to persist 
in trying, is not like such a special instinctive activity as 
is the converging of the optic axes when the eyes are 
fixed upon an object. For the latter, the special 
instinct, is, by itself, a directly adaptive instinct. But on 
the other hand, the general tendency to persist in 
actions which are thus far not adaptive, is a tendency 
which does not, at the moment, or in any brief time, 
necessarity lead to results that are serviceable to the 
organism. Nor, on the other hand, is this general ten- 
dency one that predetermines precisely what kind of 
act, whether adaptive or in so far ineffective, shall be 



3o8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

carried out. The eager child is disturbed by its environ- 
ment, and hereupon is led somehow to a reaction which, 
owing to the immaturity of the organism, is thus far 
very imperfectly adapted to the environment. To the ob- 
server the child seems to be trying to do something, but 
not to know what it wants to do. The particular act in 
question may be the expression of some instinct not yet 
completely developed. But hereupon there now ap- 
pears the other instinct, — the mere tendency to persist, 
— a tendency which has a decidedly generalised form, 
and which may be described as a te7idency to do again 
and again, zvith variations, whatever the child has once 
begun to do, without any especial regard to whether 
the act is immediately adaptive or not. 

That this tendency plays a considerable part in the 
life of childhood, any observer may see for himself. 
Miss Shinn's subject, during all the period of learning 
to creep, to walk, and to climb, showed this persist- 
ence in manifold ways. It was not a persistence due 
in every case to the child's observation that she had 
already accomplished an important or otherwise use- 
ful reaction. It was frequently a persistence in what 
was so far awkwardness. I have called the persist- 
ence a tendency of a more generalised kind, because 
it seems to be a normal expression of the vigorous 
activity of a growing organism. It seems also to be 
an expression which may be applied in various direc- 
tions, so that of itself it does not predetermine what 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 309 

activities shall be persisted in, but only that any one 
of a large number of imperfect instinctive tendencies, 
if once begun, shall be repeatedly pursued. This 
tendency seems to be represented in consciousness by 
feelings in terms of which the child estimates the 
acts that chance experience, acting upon its immature 
instincts, may have so far initiated. Observers usually 
interpret these feelings as, in the normal case, predomi- 
nantly those of pleasure. Professor Baldwin, who lays 
great stress upon the "heightened activities" of the 
organism as a basis for the acquisition of new special 
adaptations to the environment, regards these height- 
ened activities themselves as, at the outset of the evo- 
lutionary process, the accompaniments of pleasurable 
feelings ; and that this is to a considerable extent 
true is unquestionable. But one has only to take a 
somewhat wider view of activities of this type to see 
many cases in which, even when they first appear in 
the course of evolution, they seem to be inevitable, 
although they do not appear to be markedly pleasur- 
able. From our own point of view, the feeling that 
consciously accompanies such early activities is the 
feeling of restlessness rather than that of pleasure . 

Some act, due to a stimulus working upon a still 
immature ' nervous system, is awkwardly performed, 
and leads thus far to no satisfactory result. What 
shall be the consequence } The consequence of course 
may be, and often is, that tJie mere activity of tJie 



3IO OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

healthy organism is itself joyous, whatever its result. 
In this case the child will take pleasure in the act 
and will repeat it. The repetition will be an expres- 
sion at once of the general law of habit and of the 
usual effects of pleasurable excitement. Professor 
Baldwin finds at the basis of all such repetitions 
a certain fundamental tendency of the organism to 
what he calls "circular reactions," that is, to sorts of 
reaction whereby any stimulus, if once presented, is, if 
possible, again repeated. The " circular reactions " 
thus include all acts that tend to be repeated over and 
over. Granting the existence, in an organism, of in- 
herited tendencies to such circular reactions, granted 
the heightened activity with its pleasurable conscious 
accompaniments, and granted the occurrence, in con- 
sequence, of any sort of reaction, however imperfect 
or awkward ; and then, indeed, the tendency to try 
and try again, may be regarded as a 7iatural expression 
of the whole relation between the organism and the 
environment. 

Nevertheless when we ourselves are able consciously 
to observe, even in maturity, similar processes, the con- 
scious accompaniments need not be pleasurable. We 
may find, in ourselves, at such times, simply the sense 
that the result thus far reached is unsatisfactory, and 
we may feel a restlessness. This restlessness may con- 
stitute either a painful, or a comparatively indifferent 
state of feeling, so far as pleasure and pain are con- 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 311 

cerned. But the feeling in all such cases will be a 
distinctly restless feeling, and may accompany the 
general organic tendency to persist in trying afresh. 
This doing of something further may, for the reasons 
upon which Professor Baldwin has insisted, appear 
predoini7iantly in the form of a series of ^^ circular reac- 
tions T But the trying again may also give place to 
another sort of restlessness zvhich leads to ejforts at 
movements iji some new direction. The dissatisfied 
creature may persist, but may persist in a restless 
search for whatever else can be done tmder the circimt- 
stances. And the trying again may be but a mere 
incident of this restlessness, an incident due to the 
fact that the repetition of the awkward act is one of 
the comparatively few resources which recent ex- 
perience has made available. In any case, the persist- 
ence in some sort of behaviour, which is involved in every 
such activity, tends to resiilt in briiiging the organism into 
constantly new relations with the enviro?iment. It may 
also result, as is probable, in hastetiing the grozvth 
of those nervons connections which, in the immature 
organism, will be necessary prelim.inaries to the acqui- 
sition of better adaptations . In general, the result of 
the disposition to persist, either, with pleasure, in trying 
again the awkward act, or, with restlessness, in trying 
anything whatever proves to be possible, will be a 
tendency that at the moment when it most forcibly 
expresses itself in action is not a directly adaptive 



312 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tendency. Furthermore, its results will not be wholly- 
predetermined by heredity, nor yet by the kind of 
relation to the environment which the growing organ- 
ism has yet attained. The most important consequence 
of this vague struggle for something more will be that 
opportunities will be given to the organism to acquire 
adaptations wJiich it never could acquire, unless this 
predisposition to endless experiment and to the try- 
ing of various relations with the environment were 
presefit. 

§ 120. The significance of the processes thus charac- 
terised will better appear if we hereupon consider two 
different classes of cases, the one much lower and 
simpler than is the case with the child, the other much 
more complex, but nearer to our own present conscious- 
ness. 

Let us return to the case of the caged animal, or of 
the pet animal turned out of doors and anxious to get 
in again. Owing to the environment, such an animal 
is, at the moment, unable, on the basis either of instinct 
or of acquired habit, to make a desirable adaptation to 
its environment. It tries, struggles, and fails. What 
is the result .-' The result may be that, after a certain 
number of efforts, the discomfort of the struggle is so 
great that further effort is inhibited, and the animal 
passively resigns itself to the situation. So far no 
phenomena appear which are not generally explicable 
on the basis of sensitiveness, instinct, and docility. But 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 313 

now on the other hand, the animal may continue its 
attempts to escape or to get in. It may continue them 
in the form of constantly varied activities whereby 
it tries experiments, such as bring it into entirely 
novel contact with the environment. These experi- 
ments may nltimately result in the occurrence of acts 
for whicJi the animal's pi'evious training had not pre- 
pared it. When these acts finally occur, they will 
indeed be the result of a process of trial and error. 
They will indeed be instances of sensitiveness and 
docility. They may involve successful adaptations. 
They may thereupon establish useful habits for the 
animal's future conduct. But one feature of the 
whole process remains which is not fully explained 
in terms of the animal's special instincts (such as 
desire for warmth or for food or for comfort), and 
which is also not explained upon the basis of the 
animal's previous habits. This feature is suggested 
by the question : Why did the animal persist, under 
apparently hopeless conditions, and despite failures .■' 
WJiy did it persist in activities which were so far not 
adaptive f 

The answer to this question may sometimes be stated 
in terms of the animal's painful feelings. One may say 
that the animal continued to long for food, or for other 
comfort, and to have some idea, based upon its former 
experience — some idea of the attainment of its ends. 
Its docility and its already established habits would then 



314 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

explain why, with such feelings, it persisted. But such 
an explanation in terms of the animal's feelings is, after 
all, ambiguous. For the struggle is painful, as well as 
the failure. The point may come where the pain of the 
struggle becomes greater than the pain of the lack. In 
case of a sufficiently hopeless struggle this point is actu- 
ally reached, and the animal finally surrenders to fate. 
But what determines whether the one of these two pains 
is greater than the other ? The answer is, of course, to 
be given in terms of the nervous constitution of the 
animal itself. 

But when one considers this constitution, one has to 
take account of still another fact. Some animals are 
actively persistent. They are so by inherited disposition. 
However painful certain situations, they will not give up 
until exhaustion sets in. Other animals, which appear 
no more sensitive in many ways than are the former, 
are more quiescent. They surrender more readily. The 
difference between two such different animals may of 
course be described in terms of pleasure and pain. But 
this difference also seems equally to suggest a descrip- 
tion in terms of feelings of restlessness and quiescence, 
that is in terms of nervous predispositions which have to 
do, not so much with pleasure and pain, as with being 
disposed to persevere and to vary activity. Such predis- 
positions are themselves matters of the greatest vari- 
ation both in ourselves and in the lower animals. Thus 
the horse can be broken to harness, because, in certain 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 315 

painful situations which are opposed in many ways to 
his primitive instincts, he erelong gives way. The 
zebra is said generally to escape being broken to har- 
ness, not perhaps because he finds it more painful, but 
because he actually persists longer in his struggle. In all 
such cases, where mere persistence in a certain type of 
action characterises an animal, and leads to a process of 
trial and error that finally results in adaptive reactions, 
one finds a factor which, for a time, may produce appar- 
ently useless activities ; but it leads, in the end, to the 
establishment of fitting relations to the environment. 
Now this factor, this peculiar persistence, belongs to 
the temperament of the animal. The creature that has 
such a tendency is likely, in certain situations, to form 
neiv habits, or to vary his old habits, in an adaptive direc- 
tion. The heightened activities that lie at the basis of 
such tendencies are primarily activities of the restless 
type. They may be pleasurable activities, or they may 
be activities that involve the effort to escape pain. But 
they are not to be uniquely characterised in these terms. 
It is best to characterise them as the activities which 
lead to very various sorts of persistent experiment, that is, 
to repetitions and variations of such acts as so far prove 
to be maladaptations. 

§ 121. To turn now to a case that appears in the 
life of human beings, A problem baffles us. It 
may be a practical problem. It may be a matter of 
voluntary decision. It may be, in the main, an in- 



3l6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

tellectual problem. The environment arouses us to 
action. But we are provided with no present adapta- 
tion. Our efforts to meet the situation prove abortive 
and disappointing. What shall we do ? One in vain 
endeavours, at such times, to define our activities in 
terms merely of pleasure and pain. Of course our 
present failure is painful, and we indeed seek to 
escape from this suffering. Of course the thought 
of our thus far unattainable ideal arouses new desires 
to attain it. But there are various ways of escap- 
ing from such pains. The effort to escape by fresh 
attempts at winning the goal is itself painful. It 
involves renewed disappointments. Meanwhile, if we 
can once persuade ourselves to give up the strug- 
gle, the pain again diminishes. What shall determine 
whether we go on or not ? Whatever does determine is 
something that lies very deep in our nature, that varies 
from person to person, and that is best expressed in 
consciousness in feelings not so much of pain and 
pleasure as of restlessness and quiescence. This 
deciding factor is our disposition to persevere either in 
repeating with variations the particidar acts that have so 
far proved abortive y or in searching elsewhere — any- 
where — for a chance solution of our problem. If this 
tendency is sufficiently predominant, we continue our 
efforts, and may do so when they are intensely painful. 
The result may be, in extreme cases, the "do-or-die" 
mood, which will end either in success, and in a novel 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 317 

form of adaptation to the environment, or else in our 
entire destruction. What is noticeable about this per- 
sistent tendency, when it appears, is that it is a very 
general tendency. It is the expression of an instinct, 
related to our special habits and instincts as the gen- 
eral experiences of orientation are related to our special 
experiences of the place of a point in space. It is 
aroused, not by a special stimulation, but by our finding 
that we are in the position of having undertaken some- 
tiling, and of having thus far failed. It predisposes 
us to no one kind of action, except to the general effort 
to try other reactions that may have to do with the 
task which we have begun. Thus, at first, it merely 
seems to dispose us to persist in maladaptations . In 
case of kindlier fortune this tendency may be very 
pleasurable ; but it appears in instances that cannot be 
explained in terms of Professor Baldwin's heightened 
reactions due to pleasure. Nor can I wholly accept 
the special explanations that Professor Baldwin has 
offered when he deals with the presence of such per- 
sistent activities as are, for the moment, painful. But 
what is certain is that our poiver to learn decidedly neiv 
variations of 02ir habits will usually depend upon the 
presence of this perseverance. And this is what every 
moral cou-nsellor of resolution practically recognises. 
The restless men may prove to be failures, but tJie most 
sticcessful of Jiuman beings are the men who are in some 
respects prodigiously restless. These persist in doing 



3l8 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

what just now need not be done. They persist in 
trials despite maladaptations. Failure stimulates them. 
What the environment cannot yet teach them, they teach 
the environment to furnish them, sooner or later, in a 
form that they can assimilate. 

§ 122. Now my thesis is that the apparently spontane- 
ous variations of our habits which appear in the course 
of life, attd which cannot be altogether explained as due 
to external stimulation, have as their principal internal 
cause this restlessness. The restlessness itself appears 
sometimes in more or less specific forms. But it is, 
on the whole, something very much more general 
in its character, than is any one of the specific instincts 
upon which our particular habits are founded. 

The thesis that tJie restless over-activity of the organ- 
ism in carrying out its instinctive processes, or in seeking 
opportunity for the establishment of new finctions, is the 
principal condition of every significant form of m,ental 
initiative, may seem to reduce the province of mental 
initiative to a very modest and narrow range. But one 
has only to observe a little more closely our life, in 
order to see that the range thus left to mental initiative 
is, as a fact, very large. The environment and the 
inherited tendencies of an organism determine at any 
moment specific acts. The already acquired habits of 
the organism determine how these specific acts shall be 
based upon former actions. So far, however, the envi- 
ronment appears as the one source of whatever novel- 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 319 

ties are to appear in conduct ; while the organism 
appears disposed to persist in its former modes of con- 
duct, or to repeat such actions as its ancestral tenden- 
cies, its experience, and its docility, predetermine. But 
if, amongst the various reactions of the organism, there 
are stick as take the form of a restless search for novelty 
of environment and of conduct, then novelties will appear 
in tJie actions of the organism — novelties which are due, 
in an important measure, to the tendencies which the or- 
ganism itself has inherited. And yet the resulting acts 
will be not mere repetitions of ancestral acts, because 
they will have resulted from novel relations to an envi- 
ronment. It thus comes to be the case with the organ- 
ism and with the mind, as it is with the emigrant to 
a foreign country. In the new country he lives a new 
life, and not the life of his ancestors. This result is 
indeed due to the new environment. Yet the new envi- 
ronptent zvould never have come to Jam if he had not 
wandered. And he would never have wandered had 
it not been the result of a restlessness that was his 
own. 

§ 123. The kinds of mental initiative which can result 
from the tendencies now summarised may next be 
briefly surveyed. First and most notable in the devel- 
opments of early childhood are the forms of novelty 
in conduct, and of accompanying mental initiative, 
which are displayed in the plays of children. As Groos 
has shown in his monographs on the Play of Ani- 



320 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

mals and The Play of Man, the value of play lies 
especially in its relation to the ftitiire activities of 
the adult organism. The various instincts which are 
manifested in play, whether in animals or in men, are 
indeed inherited instincts. But like all the higher in- 
stincts in vertebrate animals, they are inherited, as we 
have seen, in an imperfect form ; and their expression 
is subject to much individual variation in consequence 
of the experience acquired by the individual animal 
or child as it plays. Just because the play activities 
are carried out at a time when they are not necessary 
to the preservation of the organism, they receive a free 
and manifold development for which there would be 
no opportunity if the same activities were postponed 
until the necessities of adult life called for the arts in 
question. The kitten, playing with sticks, and with 
leaves, and with other kittens, gets an expertness in 
pursuing and catching prey which it would not have 
time to acquire if it waited until hunger drove it to 
pursue food. Precisely the same principle holds with 
regard to the far more complicated plays of children. 
I have heard a sea captain tell how, in middle life, he 
saved his ship, in an emergency, through a device of 
navigation that he first learned, in a crude form, when, 
in boyhood, he was playing with his sail-boat in his 
native harbour. The same general principle holds 
regarding numerous arts which children acquire in 
connection with early and spontaneous plays. Now 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 32 1 

the most notable characteristic of the play activity, 
whether in the animal or in the child, is its apparent 
spontaneity. Yet every detail of a playful function 
can of course be interpreted as the result of the laws 
of habit, and of the immediate influence of the envi- 
ronment upon an organism, endowed with such and 
such instincts, and subject to such and such stimuh. 
Wherein, then, lies the peculiarly spontaneous charac- 
ter of the playful activities ? Wherein does play most 
differ from any other activity, such as eating or as run- 
ning from an enemy ? The natttral answer is that the 
playful activity appears spontaneous because it is carried 
out when thej^e is no necessity of carrying it out. In 
other words, a playful activity is not an adaptation to 
the environment such as the momentary conditions 
imperatively call for. But to say this is to admit that 
the spontaneous aspect of a playful function lies es- 
pecially in the restless overflow of activities that the 
playful organism shows. It seems to us, the specta- 
tors, as if the world did not require the child to play. 
Yet after all the child's play is like any other action, 
— a response to the environment, a response involving 
sensitiveness and docility, and dependent upon previous 
habits. Why do we make this comment on the appar- 
ent needlessness of the play .'' Because we recognise in 
the playful activities precisely the character of restless 
overflow, a character which we recognise, in other 
forms, in the persevering struggles of the imprisoned 



322 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

animal to escape, and in the equally persevering efforts 
of the inventor or of the reformer to solve the problems 
of his art or of his age. 

In the case of the play of childhood we have, in 
fact, a collection of functions whose value lies ?iot iii 
the immediate adjustments to the enviro7iment then car- 
ried out, but in what we might call the prophetic im- 
portance of the activities in question. These are 
not only repetitions of ancestral activities, but they 
are in part (although indeed not altogether) an in- 
dication and foreshadowing of functions which are 
afterward to become important. And the playful 
functions acquire such importance in the child's life, 
not merely because the environment suggests them, 
and not merely because the child's special instincts 
and habits make the plays at the moment fascinating, 
but because the child' s restless eagerness, — his insistence 
upo7i trying over and over the playfiil activity until it 
wholly satisfies his own ideals, — because, I say, these 
tendencies of the child keep him at play with an ear- 
nestness which expresses his own initiative. Conse- 
quently, as any close observer of childhood knows, 
children play, not merely because it pleases them, but 
becaiLse they must play. They often play to the point 
of exhaustion. They play, on occasion, distinctly pain- 
ful, as well as, on occasion, agreeable games. Their 
playful activities may sometimes possess all the per- 
sistence of the " tropisms " that Loeb has observed 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 323 

in lower organisms. These considerations hold true 
not only of many social, but of some solitary games. 
The child may grow much overexcited in the pursuit 
of a self-chosen play ideal, even when he has no com- 
rade to urge him to emulation. He may weep or 
rage over a failure to accomplish one of his own 
playful designs. He may insist upon one of his 
playful ideas with a seriousness and intensity that 
may weary all his family and friends. If such phe- 
nomena occasionally seem pathological, their normal 
equivalents are of the utmost importance in the life 
of every intelligent child. And my present insistence 
is upon the thought that in this eagerness, in this 
per'severance, and in the restlessness with which the 
whole playful activity is piirsned, lies the ijiitiative 
which the child may himself be said to contribute 
toward the organisation of his playfid functions. 

This initiative keeps him busy in perfecting old 
plays, or in searching for new ones. It makes him 
endure the criticisms of playfellows, and submit to 
the often severe discipline which the social forms of 
play early involve amongst the groups of children 
concerned. This initiative makes of the child very 
frequently a specialist in some form of childish art, 
or of amateur collection. And what such initiative 
may accomplish for the organisation of the child's 
mental life, becomes manifest when we for a moment 
consider the great variety of arts and ideas that chil- 



324 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

dren teach themselves through play. The various 
types of self-consciousness, such as appear during the 
dramatic impersonations of early childhood ; the vari- 
ous arts, such as drawing, manual training, sleight 
of hand, skill with boats, or with other objects of early 
play — these, together with a knowledge of nature, 
and sometimes a certain literary inventiveness, are a 
few of the mental treasures that childhood may win 
from its various games. Such are some of the forms 
in which what is often well called the " originality " 
of a child may display itself. One sees, then, that 
in the mere persistence of the playful child one has a 
factor whose value for mental initiative it is Jiard to 
overestimate. 

§ 124. Second, amongst the regions where mental 
initiative is displayed, we may name the activities of 
youth as they appear at the point where youthful 
productivity is most manifest and important. If we 
ask why an original genius produces his first great 
work, or why a man of talent first discovers his 
mission, or why a man of mediocrity wins that control 
over his powers which makes him the successful busi- 
ness man or professional person, our answer, so far 
as we can give it at all, must of course take account, 
in large measure, of features of which we have already 
spoken when we discussed sensitiveness and docility. 
What a man can do, depends upon what he can ob- 
serve, upon what he can feel, and upon what he can 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 325 

learn as his instincts are trained. And when thus re- 
garded, a man seems to be the creature of his environ- 
ment. But there is one thing that his environment cannot 
determitie. Nor yet can his special instincts — for in- 
stance, the instincts that prepare him to be a painter 
or a poet or a politician or a good salesman — deter- 
mine whether or no this one thing shall be present. 
This one thing is the poiver of the organism to persist 
in seeking for new adjustments, whether the environ- 
ment at first suggests them or not, to persist iii strug- 
gling toward its zvholly unknown goal, whether there 
is any apparent opportunity for reaching siich a goal 
or not. Such pei'sistence is the one initiative that the 
organistn can offer to the world. It appears, in the 
individual case, in the form of passionate interests in 
apparently useless activities. Such passionate interests 
may in some cases prove to be as decidedly injurious 
as they may in other cases be useful. Thus a passion- 
ate interest in gambling may lead straight to destruc- 
tion. But the gambler's interests, where they appear, 
involve in their own way a sort of initiative which, 
destructive though it proves, has, in common with the 
nobler devotions, exactly the feature that makes all 
such devotion of such critical importance to the or- 
ganism and to the mind. Without such insistent 
interests, restless in their manifestations, persevering 
in their tendencies to repeat over and over, and to 
vary, fascinating activities, the organism and the mind 



326 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

remain the prey of the environment. With such inter- 
ests mental initiative becomes prominent What a 
man is to learn still depends upon experience and 
opportunity ; but the restlessly active man regards his 
world as destined to express his purpose. He moulds 
his environment accordingly. And in the long run 
his life thus becomes not only a bit of the world's 
life, but his own life. 

§ 125. A third class of illustrations of this sort of 
significance which persistent restlessness may possess 
we find, on the social side of our activities, in a tendency 
which we already mentioned, in an earlier chapter, in 
describing the bases of our social docility. We there 
pointed out that, as a social being, man is strongly dis- 
posed, on the one hand, to imitate his fellows, on the 
other hand to set himself in opposition to them — to 
lay stress upon the social contrast between his environ- 
ment and himself. Now the persistent tendency to estab- 
lish a contrast between one's social activities and those of 
one' s fellows lies at the root of tJie social tendency called 
Individualism. Individualism may of course appear in 
unhealthy forms. But where it is rightly connected 
with social docility, it forms the most important aspect 
of what may be called our Social Initiative. Now our 
social initiative depends upon constantly using social 
arts, upon our continually employing socially acquired 
habits. On the other hand, the wisely persistent, 
the restless although rational desire to be, as we 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 327 

say, "ourselves," to "call our souls our own," this is 
tJie continual mother of invention in all our social activi- 
ties. This it is which inspires repartee, which enlivens 
conversation, which, in childhood, leads to our endless 
questions, and which, in later life, makes us considerate 
and thoughtful as to our answers. This it is which pro- 
vides the hostess with her devices for entertainment, the 
teacher with his plans to introduce novelty into school 
life, the literary man with designs for his new works. 
The enormously complicated mental processes involved 
in such successful activities are all of them subject 
to the laws of habit and of sensitiveness. They are 
impossible unless the environment continually suggests, 
and unless habit and training constantly support, the 
activities and the ideas of which inventive minds make 
use. But my present interest lies in pointing out that 
tmless this eagerness for the diversification of social life, 
this insistence upon individualistic desires, zvere persist- 
eiitly present, habit and environment would in vain 
provide the materials for inventiveness. Social inven- 
tiveness depends upon individualistic restlessness. The 
latter, in its turn, depends upon vital activities that are 
as elemental as the " tropisms " of the organisms upon 
which Loeb experimented. The people who have such 
vitality of concern in social success, and who have such 
an elemental love of social contrasts, are the initiators. 
If you find a whole nation consisting largely of such 
persons, you stand in presence of the ancient Greeks 



328 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

at their best. Individualism always depends upon quite 
elemental tendencies, — upon dispositions to pursue 
social contrast-effects with eagerness, even where such 
experiences possess, at the moment of pursuit, com- 
paratively little adaptive value. In short, "the king- 
dom of heaven is taken by violence." 

§ 126. A final series of illustrations of the conditions 
of mental initiative we have furnished to us by the 
ordinary activities of oitr attentive functions. It has 
been common, in recent psychology, to insist upon the 
active attention as a factor of great significance for the 
understanding of the apparently spontaneous processes 
of consciousness. The school of Wundt have used the 
name "apperception" to signify, not so much the 
assimilative process upon which Herbart laid stress when 
he used that name, as the process by which, from mo- 
ment to moment, our attentive consciousness moulds its 
own material in accordance with intellectual ideals, and 
influences the processes of association, so that these 
shall assume a definitely significant and thoughtful 
form. It has been objected to the partisans of Wundt 
that the term "apperception," as thus used, seems to 
signify a factor in mental life which can be explained 
neither in terms of what we have called sensitiveness, 
nor in terms of the law of habit. It has also been 
objected that the conception of a conscious process, en- 
gaged in influencing its own states, is a conception 
which confuses together metaphysical and psychological 



THE CONDITIONS OF MENTAL INITIATIVE 329 

motives. The psychologist, engaged as he is, not in 
studying how Reason forms the world, but in observing 
and reducing to rule the mere phenomena of human 
mental life as they occur, is not interested, it has been 
asserted, in a power whose influence upon mental phe- 
nomena seems to be of so ambiguous a character as is 
that which the Wundtian " apperception " possesses. 

It is far from my present purpose to enter into the 
subtle controversies to which this conception of Wundt's 
has given rise. This is the place neither to expound 
nor to estimate Wundt's theory. But it does here con- 
cern us to point out that wJiat occurs in mind whenever 
we are actively attentive is attended with a feeling of 
restlessness^ which makes us dissatisfied vuith all those 
associative processes that do not tend to fnrtJier onr cnr- 
re7it ifitellectual interests. On the other hand, the cere- 
bral processes that accompany active attention are 
certainly such as tend to inhibit many associative 
processes that would, if free, hinder our current intel- 
lectual interests. Meanwhile, our active attention itself 
is always the expression of interests which possess the 
same elemental character that we have all along been 
illustratijig in the foregoing pai'agraphs. The attentive 
inventor is eager about the beautiful things that he 
thinks of while he is trying to invent. The attentive 
hostess is eager about social success. The attentive 
caged animal is eager about whatever suggests a way 
of escape. In brief, zvhocver is persistently attentive is 



330 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

expressing an attitude of the organism zvhich has the es- 
sential character of the now frequently mentioned ^^ tr op- 
isms " of tJie animals of Loch's experiments. Active 
attention does not appear in our life as in any sense a 
supernatural, or disembodied force. It appears as an 
eagerness to get into some kind of relation to objects or to 
ideas, — an eagerness which is accompanied with restless 
feelings, and which while in itself not directly creative, 
is continually selective. The organic conditions which 
accompany active attention tend toward the persistent 
bringing before consciousness of certain ideas and com- 
binations of ideas, and to the equally persistent inhibi- 
tion of other ideas and combinations of ideas. The 
result of the continued influence of such a process is 
the constant moidding of otLr relations to our environ-ment 
and of our habits, iii such wise that certain mental com- 
binations appear, zvhich zuould otherwise have been 
impossible. Thus it is that our active attention contin- 
ually exemplifies, even in the ordinary processes of 
waking life, mental initiative. But it does so in no other 
way than in the way already exemplified when we spoke 
of the play of children, of the constructive activities of 
youth, and of the effectiveness of individualism. 

§ 127. If the foregoing discussion is at all well 
founded, we now have before us the bases upon which 
the natural history of all " self -activity " must be 
founded. Apart from the effects of experience, apart 
from the influence of special instincts and of training, 



THE CONDITIONS IN MENTAL INITIATIVE 331 

what may be called the self-activity of an individual 
depends upon certain general instincts, — instincts which 
manifest themselves in a form of a restless tende^tcy 
to a certain overwcaltJi of persistent activities. These 
activities are pursued at times when the results are 
not immediately adaptive. All such activities espe- 
cially involve a tendency to alter, in a relatively spon- 
taneous way, our own relations to our environment. In 
the simplest form they appear as efforts towards a local 
change of environment. /;/ tJieir highest and subtlest 
form they take shape from moment to moment in the 
processes of 02ir active attention. All such activities are 
characterised by the feeling of restlessness. In tJieir 
physical aspect they are examples of the " tropisms " of 
Loeh. They may be abnormal and dangerous. In their 
normal form they work to produce a contiiutal and rela- 
tively spontaneous modification of our existing habits. 
They cannot be referred altogether to that heightened 
intensity of organic processes which is due to pleasur- 
able stimuli. For in general, we have found reason to 
believe that the feeling of restlessness is decidedly inde- 
pendent of the feeling of pleasure. In the most impor- 
tant part of our activities we are eager not for pleasure, 
but for rationally satisfactory change both of our en- 
vironment and of our conduct. Upon such rational 
eagerness is based all that is most characteristic of our 
mental initiative. 

The practical consequence is obvious. Nothing is 



332 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

more significant for mental life than the cultivation of 
strenuous activity. Every sign of such a tendency 
should be encouraged by a teacher. It is equally true 
that every effort should be made not to confuse such 
activities with those which merely give a child pleasure. 
The purpose of a teacher is not merely to aid a child 
" to do what he likes to do." The purpose of the 
teacher is to assist the child to become eager to do some- 
thing that is in itself of a rationally significant tendency. 
That this eagerness is pleasant, is indeed often the 
case. But the pleasure is by-play. The restless eager- 
ness is the essential. And it is such eagerness that 
accompanies us into later life, wherein we may often 
be deeply interested in life, even when we find only 
very moderate pleasure in it. As Schiller states the 
case, " Passion flees, but love must remain." And in 
this chapter we have been discussing that elemental 
love of rational novelty upon which all mental initiative 
depends. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Certain Varieties of Emotional and Intellec- 
tual Life 

§ 128. Our general survey of the mental processes 
has not been determined by the usual division of 
mental life into Feeling, Intellect, and Will. But now 
that our survey of the conditions of Sensitiveness, 
Docility, and Initiative has been completed, we may, 
in a practical review of some of the varieties and 
defects of mental life, as they are likely to come 
under the observation of the teacher, return, for the 
moment, to the ordinary classification. While all our 
mental life illustrates sensitiveness and docility, and 
while all of it is subject to the conditions upon which 
we have found that mental initiative may depend, 
some of our mental life is most prominently charac- 
terised by the presence of feelings, some of it makes 
more prominent to our consciousness our power to 
know about the world, while some of it especially 
brings to - light the organisation of our outwardly 
observable conduct. That portion of our mental life 
which was most characterised by the presence of feel- 
ing, constitutes the emotions. That portion of our 

333 



ft: 



334 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

mental life in which our consciousness is most con- 
cerned with what we know, constitutes what we 
usually call our intellect. That portion of our 
mental life in which conduct consciously predomi- 
nates is that of which we are chiefly reminded when 
we ordinarily hear the word " Will " used. So far as 
this latter word is concerned, we have indeed already 
shown that the term "Will" refers rather to the whole 
significance of our conscious life, viewed as our con- 
scious response to our environment, or as our men- 
tal attitude toward our world ; and that the word 
" Will " is of little use, as a purely psychological term, 
in the classification of mental life. The same is true, 
in a less degree, regarding the word " Intellect." This 
term emphasises a certain significant aspect of our 
mental life, namely our power to have knowledge of 
the world. But as soon as one begins to study the 
natural history of the intellect, this significant aspect 
loses its apparent separateness ; and we find ourselves 
deahng with special functions and processes, such 
as those which we have illustrated under the head of 
sensitiveness and docility. Even the term " Emotion " 
suggests, at first, to our minds, rather the moral or 
aesthetic significance of the objects that we love and 
hate, than the natural history of the emotional pro- 
cesses. In consequence, our purely psychological study 
has so far prospered all the better through keeping 
somewhat in the background the terras here in ques- 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 335 

tion, although we have by no means attempted wholly 
to avoid their use. But the practical student of 
Mind is frequently concerned with asking what sort 
of will or intellect or emotion he is dealing with in a 
given case before him. And it is now our purpose 
to connect the foregoing general exposition with a 
few questions such as the practical student of mental 
life may ask concerning the processes and variations 
of the emotions, of the intellect, and of the will. In 
the present chapter we shall first briefly deal with 
some of the phenomena of the emotions; and shall 
point out some of the variations and abnormities to 
which the emotional life may be subject. We shall 
then abstract that aspect of our mental life which we 
commonly have in view in making use of the term 
" Intellect," and shall speak of the practical study and 
of a few of the abnormities of intellectual life. Our 
next and concluding chapter shall be devoted to a 
brief review of the processes usually emphasised when 
one speaks of the will. 

§ 129. Our feelings do not appear in our actual 
consciousness in simple and isolated forms as mere 
pleasures, pains, and experiences of restlessness or of 
quiescence. In our concrete consciousness, we pos- 
sess what are called by the general term " Emotions." 
Amongst these there are some, the relatively calm 
and gentle emotions, for which the word " Moods" has 
been proposed. In addition there are the more vehe- 



336 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ment and intense emotions, such as anger, fear, strong 
love, and the like. The moods and the emotions 
have in common this feature, that, when we are con- 
scious of them, we are aware, not only of feelings 
but of images, general ideas, thoughts, and external 
objects. And the feelings that are present seem 
either to colour these ideal states or to give value 
to their external objects. The moods and the emo- 
tions differ, however, very widely, both in intensity 
and in endurance. It is no part of our present pur- 
pose to present any catalogue of the various moods 
and more vehement emotions, or to describe them in 
any detail. We can mention, purely by way of illus- 
tration, only one or two typical instances. Let us 
take, for the first, the emotion of grief. Here feelings 
of a painful character, accompanied by states in which 
either restlessness or quiescence may predominate, give 
character to the emotion. But all these feelings are 
centred about certain objects and ideas. Without 
these objects and ideas, the emotion of grief would 
have no meaning. We grieve over the loss of a 
beloved object. Or again, let us take the widely 
contrasting gentle emotion, or mood, called Curiosity. 
Here certain feelings of restlessness, and of pleasure 
or slight pain, accompany and colour ideas whose 
relation to our attention, and to our processes of in- 
tellectual inquiry, is characteristic of the whole emo- 
tional state. Or finally, let us take the emotion of 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 337 

Anger. Here the central idea is of some object that 
seems to be doing us an injury, while the accompanying 
feelings involve intense pain, sometimes also a certain 
pleasure, and restlessness, in very characteristic ways. 

A glance at any such emotion shows the enormous 
complexity of the conditions upon which it depends. 
As soon as, following certain psychological interests 
previously discussed, we proceed to substitute for the 
emotion in question an analysed mental state, or a 
series of such analysed mental states, we find that a 
consciousness of certain bodily activities, a very complex 
consciousness of our relation to objects, and a very 
complex collection of more elementary feelings, come 
to take the place of the original emotion, which here- 
upon appears as an enormously complicated mental 
condition. The angry man has a swift succession of 
thoughts and beliefs regarding the object of his anger. 
He assumes a rapid succession of bodily attitudes 
toward it. He has very numerous states of restless- 
ness, of pain, and even in some cases of pleasure as 
he faces the object. Our present purpose, however, 
lies not in the analysis of all these complications, but 
in the briefest possible indication of the nature of 
the conditions upon which our emotional hfe depends. 

§ 130. 'In recent literature, much attention has 
been called to the fact that, whatever the other sources 
may be of the feelings that accompany our more com- 
plicated emotions, much depends for our emotional 



338 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

life upon the fact that each emotion has certain char- 
acteristic bodily expressions. The movements that 
we make, the instinctive or voluntary expressive re- 
actions which go on when we are under the influence 
of an emotion, are in well-known ways characteristic 
of the emotion. For thus we can judge from without 
whether a man is angry, afraid, loving, etc. Now 
as we already know, our consciousness is con- 
stantly affected by our sensory experience of our 
movements, and of the organic conditions that accom- 
pany these movements. If our emotions have char- 
acteristic motor and organic expression, it follows that 
our emotional consciousness will itself be affected by 
the expressive movements, and by the accompanying 
organic states ; and thus much of our conscious feeling 
is actually secondary to what is called the expression of 
the feeling. Thus our griefs alter their emotional tone 
according to the sort of external expression that chances 
to be forcing itself upon us. Tearless grief is one 
thing, tearful grief another ; and no doubt an impor- 
tant part of the inner attitude of mind which constitutes 
the grief is determined by our very sensory conscious- 
ness of how we are expressing ourselves. This manner 
of expression is largely determined by our inherited in- 
stincts and acquired habits. Reacting to a given en- 
vironment in a given way, we then feel our own reaction. 
In telling about the tone of one's own emotions one 
often has to say, " My heart stood still," or " I felt a 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 339 

choking in my throat," or " I found myself gasping." 
The poets are accustomed thus to remind us of emo- 
tional tones by mentioning their manner of expression, 
and by so suggesting how this manner of expression it- 
self feels to one who finds himself giving way to it. 
Thus Bayard Taylor tells how, as the soldiers in the 
Sebastopol trenches sang "Annie Laurie," "something 
upon the soldiers' cheeks washed out the stains of 
powder." This importance of the instinctive or habit- 
ual expressive movement as a primary reaction to a 
given environment — the emotion being the secondary 
sensory experience of this reaction — has been of late 
especially insisted upon by Professor James. 

Meanwhile, however, there can be no doubt that, in 
addition to all states of our organs of external and of 
internal bodily sense, purely central nervous conditions 
have 'imicJi to do with the tone and intensity of onr 
emotions. Brain-fatigue of all degrees, from the light- 
est to the gravest, is likely to show itself in altered 
emotional tones, even where it gives few other easily 
marked signs of its presence. There are known dis- 
eases of the brain (such as the extreme forms of ner- 
vous exhaustion known as Melancholia and Mania) whose 
principal symptoms are profound alterations of emo- 
tional tone. The phenomena of these disorders, as well 
as other known facts, have been regarded by some as 
indicating that the current conditions of the blood sup- 
ply in the brain are direct causes of our emotional states. 



340 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

§ 131. The practical aspect of the Hfe of the feel- 
ings, and in particular of the masses of feeling and 
ideas called the emotions, is of great importance. 
Whatever their precise physiological explanation may- 
be, we are in any case warranted in saying that in the 
feelings, and in their expressive signs, we have in gen- 
eral an especially useful index of the current state of the 
nervous centres viezvedas a ivhole. The state of a man's 
present feehngs may indeed, at first sight, throw com- 
paratively little light on his character or on his 
experience, except where one already knows what 
opportunities he has had to cultivate or to learn to con- 
trol just these feelings. It is notoriously unfair to 
judge any man by his momentary mood. The now 
violently angry man may be, in general, a person of 
amiable self-control. Especially absurd, as well as un- 
charitable, is, therefore, the habit of those who regard a 
character as best to be read by considering the most 
passionate or otherwise marked emotional excesses, or 
the weakest or most foolish moods which are known to 
occur in the life of its possessor. So to judge is to com- 
mit what may be called the scandalmonger's fallacy. 
But, on the other hand, for a good observer, an emo- 
tional reaction, regarded with due reference to its exter- 
nal causes, does tend to indicate the passing general 
nervous state in a way which is of great value for psy- 
chological diagnosis. Nervous exhaustion, mental over- 
strain, show themselves (as just pointed out) first of all 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 34 1 

in emotional variability. This the popular mind gener- 
ally recognises. What is not popularly so well recog- 
nised is the fact that this emotional variabihty of 
overstrain is not by any means always equivalent to the 
tendency to " black moods " or to ill-temper, but may 
show itself — and in grave forms, too — in emotions of 
a relatively cheerful or benign seeming. The sufferer 
from nervous overstrain may have hours, or even peri- 
ods, of abnormal vivacity, when his friends, remember- 
ing his former fits of gloom, feel that now he is surely 
restored to himself, since he is so ambitious and ani- 
mated. But the symptomatic value of an emotional 
state lies rather in the degree of its variation from the 
normal mean of tJie individual temperament than in its 
agreeable or disagreeable seeming. 

If emotional variability is often a useful index of 
nervous overstrain, the permanent common quality at the 
basis of any magi's normal emotions, if once made out, is 
indeed also an important index as to the fundamental 
type of his nervous tempei'ament. By this one does not 
always mean his predominant emotions, which may 
be made predominant merely by his business or his 
fortune. One means something deeper. The emotional 
iindertone, as one may call it, of any given individual, is 
always one of the most interesting features of his char- 
acter. It must be made out by observing him in a 
num.ber of sharply contrasted passing moods, especially 
when such moods are determined by circumstances 



342 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

rather unfamiliar to him. One then finds it henceforth 
curiously independent of fortune. The fundamentally- 
cheerful man is thus to be found, even in the midst of 
the keenest distress, and even when he cries out with 
his bitterest anguish, still, at heart, not really despair- 
ing, but in possession of a certain fundamental sense of 
satisfaction in living, which no mere fortune can over- 
come, and which only a serious brain disorder can set 
aside. There are other men, and often very resolute 
men too, who have withal a deep-seated emotional dis- 
trust of life, which never leaves them in the midst of 
the most joyous good luck. They may be enduring, 
patient, even heroic, but they are never on decidedly 
good terms with their own inner state. 

Such undertones of emotion, when one has learned 
to observe them in any individual, remind one of 
the temper of an old violin, or of the quality of 
an individual's voice — facts which remain amid 
the greatest varieties in the music played or sung. 
Like the violin's temper and the voice's quality, 
this emotional undertone is unquestionably the accom- 
paniment of a permanent physical organisation. In 
case of the emotional undertone, this is the inherited 
temperament of the brain — a fact which, when 
once thus diagnosed, may be henceforth counted upon 
with great assurance. The emotional undertone 
appears to be noticeable in many cases fairly early 
in childhood, although it is liable to great changes 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 343 

in the course of development, particularly in early 
youth. 

§ 132. Abnormal emotions may occur in a great 
variety of forms. They appear not only as varia- 
tions from the normal intensity or steadiness of the 
otherwise unobjectionable emotions, but as associa- 
tions of emotions with objects, situations, or habits, 
with which these emotions ought not to be associ- 
ated in a healthy organism. Our feelings, as we 
have seen, accompany certain nervous conditions which 
colour, and in part determine, our whole "adjustment 
to our environment." If the feelings are distorted, this 
indicates a distortion of these nervous conditions, and 
so this whole adjustment must tend to fail. Conversely, 
a failure of our adjustment, if determined by nervous 
conditions which express themselves in signs of feeling, 
is itself a proof that the feelings are worthy to be called 
abnormal; for our main test of the "normal" is the 
power of successful adjustment to one's world. All 
violent passions in ordinary life are therefore relatively 
abnormal emotional states. The man who adjusts him- 
self well "keeps his head," whatever the temptations to 
passing moods of confusion. Just so, however, morbid 
fondnesses for dangerous objects or deeds {e.g. a crav- 
ing for intoxicants or a love for unwholesome reading) 
demonstrate their unhealthfulness by the very fact that 
their results are instances of moral or of physical failure 
to adjust one's self to one's environment. But the mor- 



344 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

bid emotion need not be either a violent or a special ex- 
perience. The whole emotional undertone of any " per- 
verse " character is, in its own degree, an abnormity ; 
and such an abnormity may calmly outlast years of 
training, and thousands of broken and spasmodic reso- 
lutions. In fact, what is called "perversity" of char- 
acter generally means simply an abnormity of the 
emotional undertone, and is as hard to alter as the 
latter. 

Yet, of course, great and enduring emotional abnor- 
mities can be the result, not of heredity, but of train- 
ing. Some of our emotions {e.g. our cheerful or gloomy 
undertone) are principally due to heredity ; but others 
are very much moulded as they develop in our early 
lives. Hence the importance of care as to guarding 
the growth of such sorts of emotion as are subject to 
the greatest degree of development during childhood 
and youth. 

A striking and critical instance is here the whole 
world of the sexual emotions, including the romantic 
and the " sentimental " tendencies. These, normally 
absent or only sporadically hinted at in the emotional 
life of childhood, develop with great rapidity at puberty 
and for some years afterwards. They normally occur 
at first as the phenomena of reaction to particular series 
of facts in the environment, and they occur both with 
and apart from more definite acts. But they also nor- 
mally tend to spread through and colour gently one's 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 345 

whole life to its very highest and noblest levels. Reli- 
gious emotion, for instance, has deep relations to them. 
It is the business of parents, teachers, and other guar- 
dians of youth, to see to it that these more subtle emo- 
tional reactions are controlled by duly controlling both 
this environment, and the youth's sentimental and pas- 
sionate relations thereto. The laws of brain-habit 
determine the principle that when experiences are 
keen and novel, any reaction then accomplished de- 
termines the brain's whole future to a degree never 
later equalled by other actions of the same sort and 
number. Does one early form an association between 
certain objects and certain vigorous emotional responses, 
one's emotions are thenceforth given what may prove a 
permanent " set." This, as recent investigations have 
more and more shown, is peculiarly the case with the 
sexually emotional reactions. Whether a youth is to be 
a libertine at heart or not, and whether or no his sexual 
imagination and feeling are to be definitely perverted 
even while they grow (perverted in fashions that are 
sometimes horribly grotesque and mischievous), is often 
determined by the earliest stages of his sexual experi- 
ence, wherein must be psychologically included most 
of his youthfully sentimental experience, together with 
even his religious emotions. However convention, or 
resolution, or morality, may later teach him to control 
his more definite or more external acts, the " set " of 
his inner sexual consciousness, and of all that more 



346 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 



i 



or less unconsciously gets built up thereupon, the 
purity or impurity of his feeling as a whole, his 
capacity for honourable love, the whole colouring of 
even his highest social emotions, his love of honour, 
his truthfulness, his humanity of sentiment, may be 
made or marred for life by the emotional responses 
that he makes to a comparatively few situations in his 
early w^orld of ignorant youthful sexuality — a world 
to him uncomprehended, and one where too often, 
alas, he is wholly unguided. It is one of the saddest 
of psychological blunders that even wiser guides often 
leave the young to fight this confusing battle of these 
inner emotional states alone, and so such guardians, 
entrusting the young to the mere chances of foolish 
companionships, subject some of the most delicate and 
momentous emotional functions of the youthful brain 
to a treatment that no man of sense would give to his 
watch, or even to his boots. To be sure, a false light, 
a deceitful guidance, an ignorant sort of terror at possi- 
ble mishaps, would in these matters itself determine or 
even constitute a perversion. Guidance does not mean 
mere random meddling. And even a cheerful indiffer- 
ence accomplishes far more than a morbid anxiety. But 
one need not ask for a false artificiality of instruction, 
only for a cool and reasonable " symptomatic guidance " 
of the young, given confidentially, and treated as a matter 
of course, by watchful guardians ; given, moreover, just 
when the charge is seen actually to need it. There is. 



1 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 347 

meanwhile, no one routine of instruction as to such mat- 
ters. Each case ought to be watched for itself. 

The mention of abnormal emotions leads to the prac- 
tical problem of estimating their significance when once 
they are present. Regarding the phenomena of any- 
given morbid emotional state, whether permanent or 
transient, it is a general rule that, of two morbidly emo- 
tional moods or individitals, viewed in general, and 
apart from special caicses, the cJieei fully morbid is likely 
to prove woi^se than the painfidly morbid. False 
despair, within limits, is, psychologically speaking, 
much more benign than false confidence or than vain- 
glory. One sees classic instances of this in the case of 
the before-mentioned fundamentally " perverse " char- 
acters. Such persons, in case their abnormal emotional 
"undertone" is one of dissatisfaction (of gloom, or self- 
distrust, of morbid conscientiousness), may be indeed, 
in the strict sense, incurable, since one cannot provide 
them with a new heredity. But they can often learn, 
within their limits, how to get a very effective sort of self- 
control, and to live tolerable or even nobly useful lives, 
simply because they suffer for their frailties, and con- 
sequently strive for some sort of salvation. But the 
cheerfully perverse, whose undertone is often one of 
vainglory,, and who accordingly revel in their own per- 
versities, are much more hopeless cases. You may 
give them the clearest sort of knowledge, and they 
may have a high order of intelligence with which to 



348 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

grasp it, to restate it in their own words, and even to 
preach it ; yet at heart they understand their own per- 
versity only, in secret, or openly, to admire it. The 
sole hope lies in getting them where they keenly suffer, 
not, to be sure, any external or arbitrary penalty, but 
what they can come to view as the natural result of 
their own characters. Even then, however, it is a 
ceaseless marvel to the onlooker how much they can 
suffer without either losing their false optimism or 
essentially mending their evil ways. They may change 
numerous special habits of conduct, but they still cling 
to the central enemies of their life. Self-induced an- 
guish is often their only possible medicine, yet they 
tolerate it in simply enormous doses, and often go on 
as before to their doom, persisting that they have 
learned wisdom, but daily manifesting that they are 
fools. 

A similar rule holds, as said above, regarding the 
judgment of even passing moods. A state of nervous 
fatigue which is extremely disagreeable, is in general 
nearer to the normal than a condition in which we are 
actually very tired, but feel extraordinarily vivacious. 
Cheerful insomnia is far worse than is even a decidedly 
painful sense of weariness when accompanied by sleepi- 
ness. Even anger that is uncontrollably violent, and 
that causes the keenest suffering to the angry indi- 
vidual, is less abnormal than that lucid type of fury 
which its possessor fairly enjoys and nurses. Temper 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 349 

of the first sort quickly wears itself out in pathetically- 
helpless reactions. Temper of the cheerily malicious 
sort may make its possessor a criminal before it lets go 
its hold. After great calamities people are often 
" dazed " into an ominous insensitiveness. The return 
to the normal is then marked by an anguish which the 
sufferer himself welcomes as a sign that he is again 
"coming to his senses." Thus, in general, good ob- 
servers are not easily appalled by the mere appearance 
of suffering. Mental anguish, viewed as a psychologi- 
cal phenomenon, and apart from any otherwise known 
and serious external cause for sorrow, is always an 
abnormal incident; but it is frequently, in its conse- 
quences, benign ; in its direct indications, relatively 
insignificant. 

So much must here suffice for our study of some of 
the practical aspects of the life of the emotions. We 
turn to our projected sketch of some aspects of the life 
of the intellect. 

§ 133. All the contents of the stream of conscious- 
ness, in so far as they constitute experience, — i.e. in so 
far as we learn from them, — are contents of intellect. 
When we view these contents from one side, we find in 
them, everywhere present, a certain colour of passing 
estimate, an immediate sense that they are worth some- 
thing to us at any given moment, or that they then have 
an interest to us. When we view these same contents 
in another light, we observe that not merely their pass- 



3 so OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

ing interest as such has a real importance for us, but 
that this momentary value, as we feel it, is but a hint, 
and sometimes a poor one, of the real place that they 
have in relation to our adjustment to our environment. 
Not only that given states now pass, but that certain 
former states have been, guides us in our dealing with 
the world. In so far as we eitJier recognise or otherwise 
profit by this relation betiveen our present and our former 
states, or in so far as, by virtue of such a relation to the 
past states, we are led to expect any future state, our 
mental states are said to be experiences, and they then 
have, in addition to their direct value as feelings, an in- 
direct value as indications of truth, as sources of know- 
ledge, or, once m,ore, as httellectual conditions. This 
"indirect value" we have already called their "intel- 
lectual value." 

The laws of docility determine how our mental states 
come to get this, their intellectual value. The special 
processes of the intellect have been treated under that 
head. We are here concerned with practically interest- 
ing illustrations. 

The practical study and proper guidance of the 
intellectual life constitutes one of the principal prob- 
lems of civilisation. All efforts to deal with the prob- 
lem must set out from the fact that the intellectual 
life is precisely the " organisation of experience," and 
that, on the other hand, both the expression and the 
very existence of the intellect are dependent upon the 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 35 1 

formation of rational habits of conduct, useful motor 
adjustments. 

The first principle is itself twofold. It means that 
the intellectual life depends, as to its genesis in each 
of us, upon experience, and that, apart from experience, 
we have no sound intellectual guidance. It also means 
that no experience is of importance unless it is organised, 
and that chaotic or irrationally ordered experience 
is useless, and may be worse than useless. The second 
principle shows, in general terms, how experience is 
organised. It is organised by teaching certain fitting 
habits of conduct (imitative processes, constructive 
activities, language-functions, habits of attentive ob- 
servation), such as are at once constant, familiar, and 
accurate as to their general types, and at the same time 
plastic, adaptable, and controllable, with reference to 
the novel circumstances that may arise. That this 
complex object may be attained in case of healthy 
brains is itself a matter of experience. How to attain 
it belongs to the art of the teacher — an art whose rules, 
so far as they can be stated abstractly at all, must be 
founded on the laws of habit, of interest, and of inhi- 
bition — all of them laws which can best be stated in 
terms of the physical functions of the brain. At all 
events, he 'teaches in vain who does not in some way 
organise the activities, the intellectually expressive 
deeds of his pupils. Thought is either action or 
nothing. 



352 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

§ 134. The abnormities of the intellectual life are 
more manifold and sharply definable than are those of 
the emotional life. The common formula for them all 
is a failure of due imitative adjustment to the environ- 
ment, conditioned either by defective sense organs or 
by defective or by hindered intellectual habits of brain. 
This failure, whether its cause lies in hereditary tem- 
perament, or in early training, or in acute or in chronic 
disease, is very generally a matter that shows itself 
more or less plainly to every close observer. The 
intellectually abnormal person seems "queer," or is 
called a "fool" or a "crank," or makes a "failure of life," 
or, in cases of acute acquired malady, "becomes stupid," 
or "loses his memory," or otherwise "breaks down." 
Such things, in a general way, one constantly hears. 
Intellectual defects and disorders, if considerable, do 
not easily escape notice, because the keen struggle for 
existence sets every man busily adjusting himself to 
his environment, and a serious failure of the brain to 
display useful habitual functions is sooner or later 
pretty unsparingly exposed. 

On the other hand, the diagnosis of what is the actual 
failure present in any individual case is much more 
difficult. There is, one must remember, no such thing 
as " foolishness " in general, unless, as in case of the 
extreme idiot or of the patient suffering from advanced 
dementia, one means thereby simple absence of all 
significant cortex functions. Otherwise what gets called 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 353 

" foolishness " or " crankiness " is some particular group 
of defects ; and then the question is, each time, What 
group ? It is regarding this question that careless 
judgment, in general, hopelessly errs. 

Here it must be noted, in the first place, that many 
intellectual defects and disorders are but secondary 
phenomena, due to disorders whose primary manifesta- 
tion lies rather in the realm of the feelings. The grief- 
stricken, the anxious, the worried, the exhausted man, 
or the victim of violent physical pain, may have, for a 
longer or shorter period, an almost complete suspen- 
sion, or else an extensive degradation, of all the higher 
intellectual functions. This sort of thing, in case of 
sufferers from acute nervous exhaustion, may assume 
an outwardly very formidable aspect, and may give the 
sufferer and his friends numerous fears of impending 
insanity, even where the whole trouble is of relatively 
very superficial character. The nervously exhausted 
are likely not only to be, for the time, intellectually 
inefficient, but to be keenly aware of the fact, so that 
their fears of disorder may often tend to aggravate 
what disorder they have. It is important, therefore, to 
distinguish the false fire from the real mental danger 
in these regions. 

In cases of simple nervous exhaustion, the attention is 
usually one of the most easily affected intellectual func- 
tions. It grows unequal — spasmodically intense as to 
some matters, uncontrollably helpless as to others. A 

2A 



354 



OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 



sense of confusion overtakes one in the midst of busi-| 
ness complications or of other intellectual tasks. One'sJ 
favourite mental work grows unaccountably distastefulj 
or else morbidly engrossing in its portentousness, sc 
that one cannot lay it aside during the hours of rest.] 
One forgets in the middle of a sentence what one was 
going to say, and is terrified accordingly. One thei 
talks of entire mental collapse. Memory may become 
more or less unequal or helplessly uncontrollable before 
the case has progressed far. A complaint of the 
" total loss of memory " — a complaint, to be sure, often! 
absurdly unfounded — is very common with ner-J 
vously exhausted patients. Over all these things, how-' 
ever, " the sense of inefficiency," a collection of feelings,! 
may easily be seen to preside, if one observes morel 
closely. And a noteworthy characteristic of this whole! 
state is that the nervously exhausted man can oftenj 
do all, or nearly all, that he declares himself unable tol 
do, can perform nearly all the brain functions that hel 
regards as impaired, can speak coherently, can avoidi 
confusion, can attend closely, can remember very fairly,! 
if only, without his express expectation, you engage 
him in a conversation that gets him for the timei 
" out of his ruts," and that so temporarily frees his;| 
essentially intact brain from the emotional cloud that 
is hindering his habits from their natural expression.' 
This is, of course, an objective proof that the cloudedil 
functions are not yet destroyed. So that the questionj 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 355 

of mental diagnosis is not here what the nervous patient 
can not do (when he is left to his anxiety or confusion), 
but what he still can do when for the time you get his 
thoughts " out of himself." 

§ 135. This may serve as a suggestion of the nature 
of a secondary impairment of otherwise intact intellec- 
tual processes. But we must proceed to exemplify the 
intellectual disorders proper. A striking example of 
disorders directly intellectual in type is furnished by the 
morbid phenomena, of a sensory character, called " Hal- 
lucinations," or false perceptions, which have no foun- 
dation in external facts. These occur normally in our 
dreams, often also on the borderland of sleep, and in 
a great variety of mental disorders. Sporadically, as 
single brief waking experiences, they occur also in the 
lives of healthy people. But they are never present in 
any considerable number or persistence in a wide-awake 
person without a decidedly serious nervous cause. 
This may be a cause seated in part in the external 
sense organs ; but it generally involves those portions 
of the brain where the sensory nerves of the sense 
affected have their central stations. An hallucination 
is, in any case, prima facie evidence of an abnormal 
form of central excitement. Yet hallucinations, as 
morbid phenomena, may occasionally exist for a good 
while in a comparatively isolated form in the mind. 
The patient may then be quite cool about them, may 
reason correctly that they are only hallucinations, and 



356 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

may be in all other intellectual respects apparently un- 
impaired. But this clearness can seldom thus last long. 
The strangeness of the hallucinatory experience fixes 
attention upon it. The physical cause of the trouble 
is usually pretty general. In the further development 
of the case either a general delirium follows, or the 
intellectual habits, even if they remain relatively intact, 
are ■ gradually but dangerously modified by these 
sensory intruders. The delirium of fevers, and of a 
number of other nervous conditions of toxic origin is 
largely characterised by the presence of manifold and 
massive hallucinations, along with great emotional dis- 
turbances. 

The hallucination, in itself alone considered, is a fair 
example of a special disorder of the intellectual life. 
But another form of intellectual impairment appears in 
what are technically called Delusions. Delusions are 
morbid derangements of one's habits of judgment. 
These may be, like sporadic hallucinations, phenomena 
confined to a decidedly limited region of the intellectual 
life. But this seems to be seldom the case. If a man 
suffers from one delusion, he commonly falls a prey to 
more than one, although then his delusions may still 
relate, for the most part, to some one class of topics. 
Yet the psychological mechanism is such that delusions, 
from their nature, tend to influence all of the sufferer's 
intellectual habits, and nobody can be trusted to remain 
long "insane on one topic only." One can never tell 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 357 

when the false habit may not show itself in some unex- 
pected region. 

While the phenomena of insanity proper belong else- 
where, this sketch mentions delusions simply because 
of the practically interesting psychological problems of 
diagnosis which they suggest. As to the name, the 
psychological usage differs somewhat from the popular 
usage. The latter often confounds hallucinations with 
delusions. The psychologist means by delusion a mor- 
bidly defective type of opinions, while hallucinations 
are false perceptions. When a man groundlessly and 
morbidly accuses his family of trying to poison him, 
this is a case of delusion. When a patient hears unreal 
voices talking about him, this is a case of hallucination. 
Of course, phenomena of both kinds may be combined ; 
and in many forms of insanity they always are com- 
bined. The distinction, however, is important ; be- 
cause, from a purely psychological point of view, 
a delusion is, in general, the sign of a deeper derange- 
ment than is a mere hallucination. The latter may be 
due to transient conditions of cerebral excitement. The 
former, the delusion, stands at once for the distortion 
of one of the most significant of our habitual functions, 
namely, the function of judging our relation to our 
environment. And it is a universal rule of psychologi- 
cal diagnosis that the more general the habit of brain 
which has been really deranged (and not merely hin- 
dered by temporary emotional disturbances), the worse 



358 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

is the abnormal indication. To forget a familiar name 
is possibly an abnormal, but is so far a decidedly super- 
ficial incident. To hear a voice when none is really 
speaking may be a very grave matter, if it becomes 
chronic ; but of itself, as a single incident, it indicates 
merely a state of excitement which may soon pass 
away. But coolly to insist, without any objective 
ground, that you are indubitably aware that your wife 
means to poison you — this indicates an established 
" set " of brain which (unless the cause is an acute and 
transient delirium) is likely to prove serious in propor- 
tion to the number and the generality of the altered 
habits which must lie at the basis of the perversion. 
(On the "general" habits of the brain, compare what 
has been said in § 28 near the end.) 

On the whole, other things being equal, the cooler 
and less emotional a delusion is, in the tone with which 
it is held and expressed, the worse is the indication, 
because the more does this state of things indicate a 
direct perversion of the more general "set" of the 
brain. The delusions of a fever delirium are largely 
secondary to violent emotions, and so in their contents 
they are confused, and they may soon pass away, when 
the temporary brain-poisoning is relieved. The wild, 
fleeting, and scarcely utterable delusions of an ether- 
intoxication are as massive as is the stormy emotional 
outburst of the intoxicated condition, and they vanish 
with recovery. But an experienced insane patient may 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 359 

hold to his chronic delusions with considerable coolness 
and clearness of head. His power to do so may of 
itself indicate the hopelessness of his state. Especially- 
grave is the tendency of cooler delusions to get thought 
out, or " systematised," by the patient. For thus all of 
a man's habits of brain get wrought over into the ser- 
vice of his delusion, and then he can never even con- 
ceive the way out. All of the foregoing indications 
must of course be modified by the circumstances of 
individual cases, but these suggestions may serve as 
hints of the principles of psychological diagnosis. 

A morbid delusion, for the rest, is by no means the 
same thing as a foolishly false opinion. When one 
gets superstitions, or other absurd views, by hearsay, 
and from the tradition of the social order to which one 
belongs, the process of acquiring the false belief is 
then normal, however false the faith. There is no 
view so ill-founded that perfectly sane men may not 
hold it, given a sufiicient weight of social tradition and 
of popular ignorance. But the peculiarity of the mor- 
bid delusion is that a man does not get it by normal 
methods, e.o;. by accepting current social traditions, 
but comes upon it alone, as a matter of his private 
experience. The exceptions to this rule are, for our 
present purpose, insignificant. Moreover, the morbid 
delusion has always a characteristic reference to the 
patient's own private fortunes or dignity, instead of 
being, like the socially acquired tradition, a matter 



360 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

which concerns others quite as much as himself. 
A morbid delusion may, indeed, assume a philanthropic 
seeming, but a closer inspection always shows that the 
deranged man is to an abnormal degree at the centre 
of his false world. It is he who, of all men, is most 
persecuted or exalted. 

§ 136. So much must here suffice as a mere hint 
as to the greater intellectual abnormities. Very com- 
mon, however, is another problem, viz., that of the j 
diagnosis of mere eccentricity of intellectual life, apart 
from any specifically manifest perversions. It is nor- 
mal for us to acquire the most of our intellectual hab- 
its, by imitation, from the society to which we belong. 
Our social experiences are normally the most potent 
of all our experiences. Speaking, reading, writing, 
investigating, the knowledge of our profession or busi- 
ness, the thoughts of our daily life — these are all de- 
termined for us, in great measure, by our guardians 
and teachers in early life ; by our friends, comrades, 
rivals, and other fellows in later life. Hence the most 
of our intellectual habits ought to be of a sort that 
we have in common with many of our fellows. When 
one's intellectual life varies, however, from the average 
intellect of his tribe or of his class, then, according to 
the degree and the noticeableness of the variation, one 
is called " striking," "individual," "original," "indepen- 
dent," "a man of parts," "a genius"; or, in less 
kindly speech, one is declared " eccentric," " queer," 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 36 1 

"quaint," "odd," "a fool," or "a crank." Now it is 
manifest that variations from the average intellectual 
type are, within certain degrees, advantageous both to 
the individual and to the community. The best commu- 
nities cultivate certain types of originality. One habit 
that ambitious young people often catch by imitation 
is the very habit of seeming not to imitate, i.e. of 
striving to be original. On the other hand, there is a 
good deal of intellectual originality in the asylums, 
and certain forms of eccentricity are of themselves 
abnormal. The question of diagnosis often offers it- 
self : Is this particular sort of intellectual eccentricity 
{e.g. in this young man) a mark of wholesome talent 
or of dangerous crankiness } 

The answer must be founded upon principles, some 
of which can easily be stated. Conformity to one's 
environment is, as we must insist, in the end the test of 
normality. But some original men first win their en- 
vironment over to conform to them ; and herein they 
show, even through an early conflict with the environ- 
ment, their higher sort of capacity to find a place in 
their world. Moreover, all young men have to spend 
some time in learning what they are fit for before 
harmonious life becomes possible. Thus the test of 
the conformity of a given intellectual life to a given 
environment must be applied, especially in early life, 
very cautiously. Some eccentric young men are so 
because they are " ugly ducklings," who will turn out 



362 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

swans. Still others, however, are rather geese among 
swans. The psychological observer is therefore not 
afraid of the mere show of eccentricity, even where 
it is great in degree. It is the sort of eccentricity 
that such an observer tries to consider more carefully 
before he judges. And now a general test of the 
abnormally eccentric intellectual life, where it involves 
as yet no graver disorders, ■ — no delusions, no vio- 
lently morbid emotional states, is to be found in 
much the same region as the one in which the morbid 
character of true delusions was just seen to manifest 
itself. The morbidly eccentric intellect is one in which 
the interesting experiences are to an extraordinary 
degree centred about matters which have too little social 
concern, and too much private concern for the morbid 
individual himself. This test is not applicable, of 
course, in childhood, since all young children are ex- 
tremely self-centred. But it is, despite the normal sel- 
fishness of youth, already fairly applicable in the later 
years of youth. A young man may indeed be very 
extremely and grossty " self-centred " and intellectually 
commonplace at once, without much mental danger ; 
for he belongs to his herd, and his herd will take care 
of him. His socially submissive instincts may, and 
probably will, offset the selfish grossness of his con- 
scious aims. He will live, like the rest of his kind, a 
poor intellectual life, but a normal one. He will think 
mostly about his private concerns, but still society will, 



VARIETIES OF EMOTION AND INTELLECT 363 

after all, determine wJiat he shall thmk about them. 
Not so, however, is the eccentric or "original" mind 
fatally protected by the instincts of the herd. And 
where an intellectually eccentric or original mind is 
extraordinarily devoted to thinking over, dwelhng upon, 
planning, the private success, the exalted dignity, the 
selfish preferment, of just this individual, then, in the 
combination of intellectual eccentricity and selfish narrow- 
ness of personal aim, there are strong marks of danger. 
To be sure, even such a being might have the brain of 
a Napoleon ; but that is, to speak mildly, uncommon. 
On the other hand, a nai've eccentricity of intellectual 
life, sincerely, not falsely, devoted to objective concerns 
(mathematical problems, scientific pursuits, the study of 
nobler literature, the pursuit of a modest but effective 
philanthropic career), is consistent with a true promise 
even where the anomaly is relatively great. A note- 
worthy test, then, is whether the anomalous young person 
really looks rather without than within. One need 
not add that to apply such a test needs often a pretty 
close scrutiny. Selfish greed may wear many cloaks 
and may use noble phrases. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Will, or the Direction of Conduct 

§ 137. The life of the Will has already been charac- 
terised, as we have repeatedly seen, at every step of our 
whole inquiry. We here confine ourselves to such illus- 
trations of the growth of the will, and of its variations, 
as will help to render our foregoing discussions more 
easily applicable to the facts of life. It is therefore 
possible to be here especially summary in our method 
of treatment. 

By the term Will in the narrower sense, one very com- 
monly means so much of our mental life as involves the 
attentive guidance of onr conduct. How such guidance 
is possible we have in this practical study, to summarise. 

All definite brain processes tend to express themselves 
without in movements by v/hich we adjust ourselves 
to our environment. Many of these movements pass 
more or less unnoticed by ourselves. But all of them, 
in proportion as they are marked and effective move- 
ments, tend not merely to result from brain processes, 
but to influence, in their turn, the very brain whose 
processes have initiated them. If one's arm moves, the 
movement is itself a fact in the world outside the mind, 

364 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 365 

and, like any other outer fact, it may be once more per- 
ceived and remembered. One sees the arm move, feels 
the sensations of muscular contraction, and is in still 
other ways advised through one's sense ofgaris of the 
processes which the arm's movement involves. More- 
over, if the arm, by moving, accomplishes. something 
definite, such as an act of grasping, one, .perceives the 
resulting raove ment s of the object grasped. If the arm 
is engaged in writing or in drawing, one sees on paper 
the lines which the moving hand traces. In all such 
cases one observes, then, the results of one's doings. 
And so, in short, one's own activity constantly becomes 
itself a part of one's experience. If an experience is any 
mental state in so far as its relation to past states guides 
our present thoughts and deeds, and if all of our mental 
life accompanies those expressive movements, or tenden- 
cies to movement, which the brain initiates and directs, 
it follows that every mental state has an aspect in which 
it may be regarded as involving an experience of our oivn 
fashions of action, or of our own attitudes toward our 
world ; for at every instant we are acting, or tending 
to act, and so at every instant we are experiencing the 
results of our own activity, or of our own tendencies to 
action. So far, then, there is an aspect in all of our 
mental life which constitutes this life a series of experi- 
ences of ojtr ozun doings, a series which can take on, by 
the laws of intellectual growth, a highly organised and 
rational character in proportion as our habits of conduct 



366 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

become themselves regular, uniform, and complex, and 
are observed by ourselves for what they are. 

But just as our activity has its intellectual aspect, in 
so far as we constantly learn what we have done and 
are doing, so, too, this activity has also its passing value 
for us in our direct feelings. It either gives us pleasure 
or pain ; or else it makes us either restless or quiescent ; 
or possibly it combines pleasure or pain with restless- 
ness or quiescence. What we are doing at any given 
moment is thus satisfactoiy or unsatisfactory to Jis. Ac- 
tion which, by virtue of its passing character as a felt 
mode of action, relatively satisfies us, we call an expres- 
sion of our desires. When an action is such that the 
feeling which estimates it is one of predominant dis- 
satisfaction, the act opposes our ruling desires, and tends 
to be inhibited accordingly. Tims, then, every inental 
state tends to have, as a fact of feeling, an aspect zvhich 
embodies onr ciuTcnt relative satisfaction or dissatisfaction 
with our own momentary doings. A desire tneans a ten- 
dency to action, experienced as sitch, and at the same time 
felt as a relatively satisfactory tendency. 

So far, then, we see : (i) that our own activity forms 
constantly a part of our experience ; (2) that this same 
activity constantly results in a modification of our feel- 
ings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in what we are 
doing. If one combines these two aspects of our in- 
ner life, one can say that together they involve a vast 
experience of oiir own desires and aversions, of our own 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 367 

doings and inhibitions, and of the inner results of these 
doings and inhibitions, together with a constant play of 
feelings of inner content and discontent zvith o?ir own 
motor processes, and ivith the tendencies or attitudes zvJiicJi. 
accompany our partially suppressed movements. 

Thus we briefly characterise that aspect of our inner 
Hfe which constitutes the world of desire and of its out- 
come. Thus viewed, our minds appear as full of pass- 
ing impulses, of tendencies to action, of passions, and 
of concerns for what we take to be our welfare. All 
these impulses and concerns get woven, by the laws 
of habit, into systems of ruling motives which express 
themselves without in our regular fashions of conduct. 
The whole of our inner life, viewed in this aspect, 
appears as the purposive side of our consciousness, or as 
the ivill in the wider sense. 

§ 138. But it remains to lay stress upon one further 
aspect, by virtue of which the world of the more or 
less organised impulses, concerns, passions, and other 
desires gets its fully developed character as the world 
of the will in the stricter or more narrow sense. We 
not only observe and feel our own doings and atti- 
tudes or tendencies as a mass of inner facts, viewed 
all together, but in particular we attend to them with 
greater dr less care, selecting now these, now those ten- 
dencies to action as the central objects in our experiejice of 
our own desires. For the process of attention often 
has as its objects not only external facts, or facts of 



368 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sense perception, but also desires, actions, inhibitions, 
tendencies to action, concerns, feelings, passions — in 
brief, whatever constitutes the active side of our nature. 
But to attend to anything is to emphasise that object, 
to give it " rehef " as against the rest of what is in 
our minds. To attend to any action, or to any tendency 
to action, to any desire, or to any passion, is the same 
thing as "to select," or "to choose," or "to prefer," 
or " to take serious interest in," just that tendency or 
deed. And such atte^itive pi^eference of one course of 
conduct, or of one tendency or desire, as against all 
others present to oiLr minds at any time, is called a 
voluntary act. 

The will is, in its more complex manifestations, the 
attejitive furthering of our interest in one act or desire 
as against another. The act or desire is in itself of 
more or less interest to us. If we attend to this act 
or desire, we further our interest in it. The furthered 
interest results in a clearer consciousness of the act 
or tendency in question. But the very existence of 
such clear consciousness implies (by the principles in- 
dicated in § 33), that the condition of brain which 
naturally expresses itself in just this form of outward 
activity is, at the moment of clear consciousness, a 
predominant condition of the brain. The furthered 
interest, if intense enough, therefore means, on the 
physical side, that the form of activity in which we 
are interested gets an actual outer expression just as 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 369 

soon as our attention sufficiently prefers the thought of 
this act to the thought of any other act. 

To think of any sort of activity, therefore, already 
implies a tendency to this form of activity. And 
actually to will a given act is to think attentively of that 
act to the exclusion or neglect of the representation 
or imagining of a7ty a7id all other acts. Whenever 
one idea of action or one type of desire becomes 
i;eally predominant in consciousness through attentive 
consideration, then the action or desire in question at 
once gets carried out, until some restraining idea arises 
and in its turn gets attended to. Choice bears, there- 
fore, the same relation to actions that intellectual 
attention bears to images, ideas, or thoughts ; and in 
discussing the phenomena of attention (see § 103 and 
§ 126), we have already discussed all that is essential 
to the comprehension of an act of will. 

§ 139. It remains to note here only one or two 
considerations of no small practical moment. The 
first is that, strange as the statement may seem, we 
can never conscio^isly and directly will any really 
novel coiirse of action. We can directly will an act 
only when we have before done that act, and have so 
experienced the nature of it. The will is as dependent 
as the intellect upon our past experience. One can 
indeed will an act which is sure to involve, in a given 
environment, absolutely novel consequences ; but the 
act itself, so far as one wills it, is a familiar act. Thus 

26 



3/0 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

a suicide can will an act which results in his own 
death, and so far he seems to be willing something 
which wholly transcends his past experience. But, 
as a fact, the act itself which he makes the direct 
object of his will {e.g. pointing a pistol and pulling 
a trigger, or swallowing a dose) is itself an act with 
which he is long since decidedly familiar. One can 
will to visit a far country, to engage in a new sort of 
speculation, to choose a still unfamiliar profession, to 
marry, or to do anything else whose consequences 
one cannot foresee. But it is the consequences that 
are novel ; the act which one directly wills is not 
novel. What one does at the decisive moment is to 
buy a ticket, to sign one's name, to say "Yes," or 
otherwise to repeat deeds whose contents are already 
perfectly familiar, while the circumstances under which 
they are willed may make them to any extent momen- 
tous. But, on the other hand, one cannot will to fly, 
because one has never learned how. We can thus 
will to do what we have leaimed to do. " Con- 
trol yourself," says the stern adviser to the spoiled 
child. But the adviser upbraids in vain. How ca7Z 
the spoiled child will to control himself if nobody has 
ever shown him, by an appeal to his imitative in- 
stincts, what self-control means ? Our choice, psycho- 
logically viewed, is thus an absolutely unoriginal 
power. It gives back what experience has taught it. 
But, on the other hand, the will, if not in itself original, 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 371 

may be to any extent origi7iative, because to repeat 
such an unoriginal act as signing one's name, or say- 
ing " Yes," may, under given conditions, begin a new- 
life for the doer. Moreover the voluntary process is 
always bound up with the conditions which determine 
Mental Initiative (see Chapter XIII). 

Closely connected with the foregoing consideration 
is the further principle that, before we can come to 
possess a will, we must first perform numerous and 
complex acts by virtue of the inherited tendencies of 
the brain. Such original tendencies of the brain are 
the source of our human instincts. The will is based 
upon instincts. These get moulded by experience. 
The resulting acts, gradually organised by the laws 
of habit, come at last to our notice, in so far as our 
doings are themselves a part of our experience. The 
accompanying feelings colour our acts so that they are 
also expressions of desire. Then attention fixes now 
on this, now on that conceived act, tendency, or desire, 
according as our interest plays over the whole series 
of such experiences of our activity. The emphasis 
which attention gives, in the end, to the ruHng idea of 
action is the inner and psychological aspect of our 
current act of will or of choice. 

§ 140. 'The growth of language in any child is an 
excellent example of the evolution of the will. In- 
herited instinct expresses -itself in the infantile actions 
known outwardly as cries, and later as more vocal 



372 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

sounds — babblings, primitive efforts at wholly mean- 
ingless articulation. Then the child begins to observe 
these acts of his own, to feel satisfaction in them, to 
desire their repetition. The result, so far, is the devel- 
opment of a chaos of vocalised expressions, but not yet 
anything resembling true speech. However, long be- 
fore this process is completed, another inherited instinct 
intervenes. The child is imitative. This instinct in- 
volves complex processes which result in making the 
child's vocal noises tend to resemble those which he 
hears from other people. This resemblance, once 
more noticed by the child, also becomes a much-desired 
ideal ; and hereby the child first gradually learns and 
then definitely wills to reproduce the utterances of 
others. Then there is added, while these processes 
are still under way, the intellectual experience that 
many of the sounds uttered by other people mean 
something — are names for things, or for feelings, or 
for purposes. This, erelong, shows the child that he 
too can express his meaning by using the right sounds. 
Now he becomes selective, attentive to speech as such, 
desirous of harmonising what he says with what others 
say or understand ; and finally, upon the basis of all 
these elaborately moulded instincts and habits, the in- 
telligent will to talk takes form ; and henceforth the 
child says whatever he predominantly and attentively 
desires or chooses to say, whenever he is thinking of 
speech rather than of any other mode of activity. 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 373 

§ 141. While the expression of our minds in and by 
our conduct is the one great tendency upon which all our 
knowledge of mind from without, and all the serviceable- 
ness of mental life for the interests of society, depends, 
it is nevertheless the case that the practical study and 
training of the will are almost always regarded as 
secondary to the practical study and training of the 
feelings and the intellect. The reason for this cur- 
rent view is obvious. Apart from intellectual train- 
ing, the life of our desires is mainly the expression 
of our inherited instincts, which nobody can hope to 
eradicate altogether, or to enrich by the addition of 
any entirely novel instincts. What can be done for 
us is to organise our planlessly numerous inherited 
instincts in such fashion that there shall result valu- 
able and consciously directed habits. The devices for 
accomplishing this aim are largely appeals to our 
universal human love of social imitation. Hereby we 
" learn how " to act aright ; and unless we have 
" learned how," one appeals to our will in vain. 
Hence what appears as an intellectual acquisition — a 
"learning how" to be good, industrious, skilful, self- 
directing, etc. — is always prior to the successful 
moulding of the will as such. As every such "learn- 
ing how "' involves interests, the feelings are appealed 
to at every point. But the will itself, whose proper 
moulding is indeed in one sense the goal of all edu- 
cation, seems to be capable of only this indirect 



374 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

approach. Or, again, to teach one to will involves 
teaching him first to take note of his own conduct. 
But to teach him this you must first establish in him 
the desired conduct. You must get him to do before 
he has consciously willed this particular sort of doing. 
The invohmtary conduct must precede the voluntary ; 
but the right sort of involuntary conduct you can 
only establish through appeals to the feelings, and 
through presenting the fitting objects of knowledge 
to the intellect. 

For the same reason disorders and defects of the 
will never exist alone. They always involve altera- 
tions either of the feelings or of the intellect, and 
must be studied in connection therewith. It is note- 
worthy that insanity, in the popular mind, is usually 
conceived as primarily an intellectual defect rather 
than as primarily a defect of the will, and this despite 
the notorious fact that insanity can only manifest itself 
through some sort of " queer " or " wrong " expressive 
action. 

Nevertheless, it is often important to consider mental 
defects or disorders from the side of the will. So 
viewed, what are usually and practically named the 
" disorders of the will " may be said to manifest them- 
selves in three general types. The first type is that of 
the absence or serious impairment of the ability to 
carry out important voluntary acts, when such acts 
have already been in the past learned as well as often 



. i 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 375 

performed. This first defect is often known by the 
rather vague name of " weakness of will." A technical 
name is "Aboulia," or morbid will-lessness. The sec- 
ond type of defects of will is that of the chaotic or 
" segmented " will, whose plans do not hang together, 
whose action is morbidly impulsive, capricious, incon- 
sistent, or inwardly anarchical. The third type of 
defects of will appears in those morbidly perverted 
persons (e.^. in morbid criminals) whose activity, with- 
out being confused or chaotic, is still steadfastly such 
as fails of any tolerable adjustment to the environment, 
and especially to the civilised social environment, 

§ 142. The first type, aboulia, is sometimes a mani- 
festation of the temperament as such. In such cases 
one naturally looks for its cause in the emotional 
"undertone" (cf. § 131). The deeply hesitant or mor- 
bidly indecisive man, who, despite having learned how 
to do a given thing, and despite his clearly knowing 
that it is to his interest to act, still remains permanently 
fast bound in a Hamlet-like incapacity to will anything 
for himself at the important moment, has become a 
favourite topic for literary portrayal. Hamlet notori- 
ously refers his own defects of will to intellectual 
causes. His " native hue of resolution " is " sicklied 
o'er withr the pale cast of thought." But such de- 
fective will may appear with a less obvious intellectual 
basis than in Hamlet's case. Then, however, the de- 
fect would probably be definable, in emotional terms, 



3/6 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

as the pretty constant presence of some emotion of 
painful timidity or scrupulosity, in the presence of 
which all very decisive action seems in general un- 
satisfactory. " Apathy " of temperament — i.e. an 
enduring state of abnormally depressed emotional sen- 
sitiveness — might have the same effect 

But aboulia is a frequent acute symptom in cases of 
more or less transient nervous exhaustion. In a meas- 
ure, every one can occasionally notice such a defect of 
will as an incident of normal weariness. At such times 
we may find it especially hard to make a decision, even 
when we seem to ourselves clearly able to see just what 
decision ought to be made, and even while we feel that, 
as we say, we "want" or even "long" to decide. The 
feeling of helplessness is then itself often extremely 
painful. If by chance we actually begin a decisive 
course of conduct, then the feeling that we are " com- 
mitted " gives a great sense of relief, and the defect 
of will may at once, for the time, vanish altogether. 

In cases of nervous exhaustion, such aboulia is an 
inconvenient complication, in so far as it tends to set 
a habit of indecision which may long survive the period 
of exhaustion itself. In itself, however, this acute 
aboulia is apparently no very alarming incident. The 
nervously exhausted man should be carefully relieved, 
so far as possible, from every necessity of making diffi- 
cult choices. He should, therefore, if possible, " resign 
his will " into the hands of some one, or at most two 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 377 

or three competent and harmonious advisers ; and he 
must be protected from every confusing variety of 
plans. On the other hand, whenever decisions are 
really necessary, he should always be gently but firmly 
helped to a quick and irrevocable choice, since hesi- 
tancy is a very exhausting incident in his experience, 
and since even a poor choice is often better for him 
than doubt. But if such care is taken, the aboulia 
itself is no very serious symptom. Sometimes one 
meets with light cases of weariness where such aboulia 
is, in fact, almost the only discoverable morbid symp- 
tom, and these cases are actually encouraging as to 
the outlook for quick recovery. 

Much more manifold are the chaotic disorders of the 
morbidly inconsistent or capricious will. Tempera- 
ments abound which are characterised by phenomena 
of this kind, and in both acute and chronic disorders 
the disorganised will is a well-known symptom. This, 
for example, is especially true in hysterical disorders. 
But ordinary nervous exhaustion is frequently burdened 
with enemies of the kind. One often sees, for instance, 
the man who forms morbidly one-sided resolutions for 
the conduct of this or of that portion of his Hfe. He 
means to permit only this or this train of thought, or 
to exclude wholly this or this possibility of temptation. 
Over the well-meant but possibly useless resolution he 
grows morbidly conscientious, and upbraids his friends 
for not sufficiently appreciating and aiding his efforts. 



378 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Meanwhile, however, he freely indulges himself in 
graver defects than the one which he is so elaborately 
correcting, and inconsistently encourages even the very 
tendencies which he is fighting by giving them a false 
importance through his over-wrought self-scrutiny. In 
more hysterically disposed cases such defectively insist- 
ent broodings will be subject also to vast changes of 
plan, so that the sufferer alters his religious faith, or 
the whole ideal of his life, without any clear reason, 
and throws to the winds a whole system of good resolu- 
tions in favour of some other equally useless scheme. 
The habit of mere fickleness may thus become finally 
prevalent over all other habits (cf. § 28, p. 69). One 
thus finds people who acquire a " mania" for changing 
their religious faiths or their callings. 

Simpler, but often very stubborn, are the phenomena 
of disorganisation of will in case some one more or 
less generalised motor habit becomes rebelliously insist- 
ent — e.g., the habit of counting or of examining gas- 
jets, locks, etc., to see whether they have been safely 
adjusted, or of asking useless questions about some sort 
of topics. Disorganisations of this kind appear in 
many patients on the basis of a defective hereditary 
constitution. But in children and quite young people 
they are also often present as mere disorders of devel- 
opment, which pass away with maturity. And nervous 
exhaustion can bring them on as acute symptoms in 
otherwise unburdened people. A surprisingly large 



THE WILL, OR THE DIRECTION OF CONDUCT 379 

number of such morbid habits can often exist without 
destroying or even seriously endangering in other 
respects the general capacity of the brain that suffers 
from them ; and the fears of an impending general 
insanity which they often arouse are therefore very fre- 
quently unfounded. On the other hand, they are cer- 
*tainly grave inconveniences, and are not to be trifled 
with. They are best treated, apart from the medical 
care of the patient's general health, through a discreet 
moral support, given by a competent adviser, who can 
often help the patient to or towards a relatively effec- 
tive and cheerful ignoring of his enemies. 

In estimating all such defects the rule holds here, as 
in case of the defects of the intellect, that the stronger 
the attendant emotional colouring of the disorder, the 
more hopeful, other things being equal, is the outlook. 
The cooler the emotional tone of the sufferer from a 
defective will, in so far as concerns his immediate feel- 
ing about his disorder, the fewer are the means of influ- 
encing his morbid state. And this finally suggests why 
the morbidly perverted characters whose wills are rela- 
tively well organised, firm, and cool, but whose behaviour 
is intolerable, are in general incurable. In consequence, 
we may as well here abandon the task of further 
describing such characters, whose mission in the 
world seems to be to illustrate the variability but not 
the healthy docility of our human nature. 



INDEX 

[In use, this index should be supplemented by the analysis of the 
text in the Table of Contents.] 



Aboulia, 375. 

Esthetic experiences, as instances of 
the harmonious relation of the unity 
and variety present in consciousness, 
89 ; aesthetic values of musical chords, 
in relation to analysis, iii. 

Affection, and the affective aspect of 
consciousness, 163. See Feeling. 

Analysis, the, of conscious states into 
elements, 97-107 ; question vifhether 
the doctrine of mental elements is 
right in its interpretation of the facts, 
107-113 ; what the facts, upon vv'hich 
the doctrine of mental elements is 
founded, really show, 113-115 ; analy- 
sis as a substitution of analysed for 
naive states of consciousness, 114; 
the process of analysis in the course 
of the actual differentiation of con- 
sciousness, 242-257. See Differen- 
tiation. 

Animals, lower, experiments upon, and 
the relation of such experiments to 
the general methods of psychological 
study, 16 ; signs of mental life in ani- 
mals, 22, 25, 34 ; questions as to the 
value and interpretation of such signs, 
23, 28-30 ; the pigeon when deprived 
of its' cerebral hemispheres, 63 ; ani- 
mal activities as indicating mental 
initiative, 4^, 312-315. 

Apperception, Herbartian doctrine of, 
236 ; Wundt's definition and doctrine 
of apperception, 328, 329. 

Assimilation, 229-247 ; physical basis 
of 231 ; illustrations of 235-247 ; re- 
lation to perception, 235 ; to memory, 



237 ; to thought, 245. See also Same- 
ness, and the analysis of Chapter X. 

Association, as the representative in 
the conscious process of the results 
of the law of habit, 203-205 ; forms 
of association, 210 ; explanation of 
cases where the law of habit seems 
not to explain the associative process, 
205-208 ; association of mental ele- 
ments, 208 ; criticism of this last doc- 
trine, 209; factors which determine 
the actual course of association in 
our ordinary consciousness, 210-217 ; 
association in its relation to assimila- 
tion, 229-247; active attention in re- 
lation to association, 262, 328-330. 

Attention, its general relation to the 
field of consciousness, 84, 85; to the ■ 
feelings, 190, 191 ; definition of atten- 
tion, 261 ; discussion of its principal 
characteristics and conditions, 258- 
264; active and passive attention, 
190, 191, 261 ; relation of attention to 
habit, 263, of 226, 227, 235, 236 ; 
fluctuations of attention, 263, 264; 
social conditions that determine us 
to regard attentively our own acts, 
283-285, 290, 291, 297 ; relation of at- 
tention to mental initiative, 328-332 ; 
active attention as dependent upon 
" tropisms," 331 ; as an instance of 
restless persistence in advance of 
adaptation, 329. Attention in rela- 
tion to voluntary action, 367-369. 
Attention in nervously exhausted 
patients, 353. 

Auditory type, of mental imagery, 156. 



381 



382 



INDEX 



Baldwin, Professor J. Mark, on imi- 
tation, 276; on heightened activities 
and the conditions of mental initia- 
tive, 307, 309, 310, 311, 317. 

Brain, as seat of the nervous processes 
that condition mental hfe, 11; the 
study of the relations between brain 
processes and mental life as one of 
the methods of psychology, 15 ; com- 
plexity of brain structure, 65 ; gen- 
eral way of functioning of the brain, 
65 ; the law of habit in relation to the 
brain, 66, 198, 200-203, 219, 231-235 ; 
localisation of cerebral functions, 67 ; 
the law of habit in relation to the dis- 
tinction between general and special 
habits, 68, 69 ; " set " of brain, 69, 72, 
78,79, 214, 215, 263; relation of the 
brain to lower centres, 70 ; inhibition 
as a cerebral phenomenon, 70-75 ; 
hierarchy of the functions of the 
brain, 70, 74; the higher cerebral 
functions as especially inhibitory in 
their relations to lower functions, 73 ; 
relation of the functions of the brain 
to consciousness, 80, 81 ; inadequacy 
of the conscious process to corre- 
spond to the complexity of the brain 
processes, 199, 205 ; formation of 
new habits, under the influence of 
new combinations of stimuli, 200- 
203 ; influence of inherited tempera- 
ment of brain upon prevailing emo- 
tional tone of the individual, 342. 

Browning, Robert, 187. 

Change, as present in the stream of 
consciousness, 83 ; in relation to the 
unity of consciousness, 95-97 ; sig- 
nificance of change and succession 
for discrimination, and for the differ- 
entiation of mental life, 248-257 ; 
change in relation to our direct con- 
sciousness of temporal succession, 

95-97- 
Childhood, mental phenomena in, diffi- 
culty of diagnosing certain mental 
defects in a child, when these in- 
volve sense organs, 27 ; sudden ap- 
pearance of the signs of inherited 



tendencies at certain points in child- 
hood, 52; inhibition in childhood, 
75. 78 ; visualisation in childhood, 
155; mental imagery as related to 
conduct in children, 161; conflict 
of feelings in the sulky child, 173; 
perception in infancy, 219-221 ; the 
expression of interest in a child in 
the form of repetitions of acts, 260; 
fluctuations of attention in childhood, 
264 ; social tendencies in childhood, 
275-279 ; the development of lan- 
guage in childhood, 2S1, cf. 371 ; ini- 
tiative in childhood, 303-312 ; plays 
of childhood, as examples of inhia- 
tive, 319-324; further passages, 332, 
342, 344 ^q- 

Clearness of consciousness, defined, 
93 ; how attained in practice, 94, 95 ; 
results from attention, 261, 262; its 
relation to social conditions in case 
of the thinking process, 283-285, 290, 
291. See also Difference, Differen- 
tiation, and Discrimination. 

Conation, 193. See Will and Conduct. 

Conduct, in its general relation to 
docility, 33, 37, 197, 198 ; in its 
general relation to initiative, 39-55 ; 
in its general relation to the signs of 
sensory experience, 24 sqq.; in its 
relation to mental imagery, 159-161 ; 
in its relation to the feelings, 172- 
176, 182-191 ; in its relation to per- 
ception, 218-228 ; in its relation to 
the assimilative process, 234, 242. 
The two fundamental social types of 
conduct, 276-279; social conditions 
that tend to make us conscious of our 
own conduct, 283-285, 291, 295, 297. 
The variations of conduct, and the 
conditions of mental initiative, 300- 
319; illustrations of initiative, 319- 
331 ; relations of conduct to attention, 
328-330, 367-369 ; relations of con- 
duct to intellect, 350, 351 ; to dis- 
crimination, 251-258. Defects of 
conduct, 347, 348, 373-379- 

Consciousness, see also Mental life. 
The general features of conscious 
life discussed, 8i-ri7 ; the " stream 



INDEX 



383 



of consciousness," 82-85; '^"6 unity 
of consciousness cliaracterised, 85- 
89; variety essential to conscious- 
ness, 89 ; what processes in the cortex 
are accompanied by consciousness, 
81, 82; consciousness inadequate as 
a representation of the complexity of 
the habits and functions of the brain, 
199, 295; psychological results of 
this inadequacy, in case of our asso- 
ciations, 205-209 ; consciousness as 
not consisting merely of a complex 
of mental elements, 84, 85, 97-117 ; 
the analysis of consciousness as a 
substitution of analysed states for 
unanalysed ones, 114, 115; when 
the unity of consciousness too much 
predominates over the variety, con- 
sciousness tends to cease, 89 ; where 
the unity and variety of conscious- 
ness, and the samenesses and dif- 
ferences present in consciousness, 
support one another, consciousness 
possesses what is called clearness, 
93 ; how this clearness is practically 
attained, 94, 95 ; how the differentia- 
tion of consciousness occurs in the 
course of our mental development, 
248-258. 

Contact, sensory experience of, 133. 

Cortex of the brain, as the seat of the 
nervous processes that are attended 
by mental life, 11; what one amongst 
the functions of the cortex are so 
attended, 81, 82; complexity of the 
structure and functions of the cortex, 
65 ; inadequacy of the conscious 
process to represent the wealth of 
the functions of the cortex, 199, 205. 
See also Brain. 

Counting, as a motor process of an 
imitative character, 292. 

Delusion, 356. 

Dermal sense, 133. 

Description, why inferior to narrative 

as a method of portrayal, 255. 
Description, scientific, conditions of 

success in, 5. 
Desire, 195, 186, 187. See also Rest 



lessness, Pleasure and Displeas- 
ure, Feeling, Will. 
Difference, as a relation always present 
amongst the various states that are 
found within the unity of conscious- 
ness, 90 ; difference inseparable from 
sameness, 91 ; if the consciousness 
of difference too much predominates 
over that of sameness, the nature of 
the difference becomes problematic 
for our consciousness, 92 ; the same- 
nesses and differences must support 
one another if consciousness is to be 
clear, 93 ; relation of difference to 
variety in consciousness, 93 ; how we 
teach pupils to take definite notice 
of differences, 94, 95 ; successive dif- 
ferences of conscious states, and their 
relation to discrimination, 95-97 ; 
an increasing consciousness of dif- 
ferences accompanies mental devel- 
opment, 230, 248 sqq. ; perception 
of simultaneous differences develops, 
on the whole, on the basis of habits 
formed through the consciousness of 
successive differences, 249-257 ; dif- 
ferences in the spatial positions of 
objects come to consciousness on the 
basis of a certain general extensity of 
our sensory experience, due to our 
total experience of orientation, 141- 
147 ; the perception of differences of 
sensory stimulation is a perception 
not of absolute, but of relative diifer- 
ences, 264-267 ; the psycho-physic 
law, 267-273 ; the consciousness of 
the differences between our own ac- 
tivities and those of our social fellows, 
and the importance of this conscious- 
ness for our thought and for our self- 
consciousness, 282-285, 290, 291, 293, 

29s. 297- 
Differentiation, of consciousness as a 
process occurring during mental de- 
velopment, and determined by the 
laws of docility, 248-273. See the 
analysis of Chapter XI in Table 
of Contents. See also Difference, 
Discrimination, Attention, Psycho- 
physic law. 



384 



INDEX 



Discrimination, discriminating sensi- 
tiveness as a sign of mind, 21 ; its 
manifestation in the signs of feeling, 
22, 23 ; in the signs of sensory expe- 
rience, 24-28 ; its relation to uncon- 
scious reactions and tropisms, 28-31 ; 
its importance in all grades of con- 
scious life, 31, 32. Discrimination 
of simultaneous . facts is aided by- 
habits formed through the discrimi- 
nation of successive facts, 249-257 ; 
practical consequences of this prin- 
ciple, 258 ; relation of discrimination 
to attention, 258 sqq. ; discrimination 
in relation to the psycho-physic law, 
264-273. See also Difference. 

Displeasure, feeling of, 168-176, 179, 
180. See Feeling, Pleasure and 
Displeasure, and the analysis of 
Chapter VII in the Table of Con- 
tents. 

Docility, definition of, 38; outer ex- 
pressions of, 32-38, 198; forms of, 
218, 229-281. General laws of, 197- 
217 ; law of cerebral habit in relation 
to law of mental association, 198- 
208 ; perception as an instance of, 
218-228. Assimilation as one aspect 
of, 229-247 ; differentiation as an 
aspect of, 248-273 ; the higher forms 
of, 274-298 ; relation of Docility to 
initiative, 41, 51, 303, 318; relation 
of docihty to intellect and will, 
198, 199, 334; Docility in relation 
to habit and association, 198-208. 
Docility often sufficiently explains the 
appearance of spontaneity in con- 
duct, 41. See also the analysis of 
Chapters VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII, 
in the Table of Contents. 

Dramatic element in all successful in- 
struction, its relation to the general 
process by which differentiation 
takes place in consciousness, 255. 

Elements, mental, the doctrine which 
maintains that consciousness is com- 
posed of such elements discussed, 
97-117; the doctrine as applied to 
associative processes, 208, 209. 



Elements of the nervous system, 58, 59. 

Equilibrium, sensory experiences of, 
in relation to orientation, and to our 
consciousness of space, 144. 

Exercise, physical, its value as furnish- 
ing a relief from inhibitions, 78. 

Experience, the signs of an animal's 
relation to its own former experience, 
32-38. See also Consciousness, 
Mental life, Sensitiveness, Sen- 
sory experience. Docility, Intellect, 
Habit, Association, Assimilation, 
Differentiation, Perception. Rela- 
tion of any new experience to the 
immediately previous and subse- 
quent states of consciousness, 83 ; 
relation of experience to the intellec- 
tual life, 351. 

Experiment, upon nervous functions 
as an auxiliary method in the study 
of mind, 16 ; psychological experi- 
ment in the stricter sense, as a lead- 
ing method of psychology, 18, 19; 
as in particular an aid to psychologi- 
cal analysis, 100, 103 ; interpretation 
of the results of experimental analy- 
sis, 112-116; experiment as a means 
of isolating and studying sensation, 
105, 106, 122, 131, 133; Wundt's 
experimental study of the feelings, 
176; experiment and the psycho- 
physic law, 267 ; experiments on 
fatigue, 217 ; experiment upon the 
movements by which we acquire 
our consciousness of space relations, 

253- 

Experimental psychology, 18, 19 ; see 
Experiment. See also Preface. 

Expressions, and Expressive acts 
and movements as signs of the 
presence and the processes of men- 
tal life, and as means by which men- 
tal life is studied, 6-9, 14; their 
relation to the introspective study of 
mind, 17 ; their classification, 21-57 1 
difficulty of interpreting them with 
certainty, 14, 15 ; their value as evi- 
dences that consciousness is present 
at all, 21, 23, 28-31 ; the expressions 
that are signs of feeling, 23; the 



INDEX 



385 



signs of sensory experience, 24-27 ; 
of docility, 32-38 ; of initiative, 38- 
58 ; the physical conditions of ex- 
pressive movements, 9, 10, 58-79; 
the inhibition of expressive move- 
ments, 70 sqq. See also Feeling, 
Docility, Perception, Initiative, Con- 
duct, Will, for the various types and 

characters of expressive movements. 
■«. « 

Fatigue, 217. 

Faust, Goethe's, as illustrating certain 
aspects of feeling and desire, 183, 186. 

Fechner, and the psycho-physic law, 
267. 

Feeling, the signs of, 22 sq. ; general 
nature of, defined, 167, cf. also 163- 
165 for preliminaries to this defini- 
tion ; classification of feelings : tra- 
ditional classification, 168 ; Wundt's 
classification, 176 ; author's classifi- 
cation, 178; definition of the feelings 
of pleasure and displeasure, 168-173, 
179; of restlessness and quiescence, 
180-182 ; mixed feelings, and their 
types, 182-189; relation of the feel- 
ings to the attention, 190, 191, 259, 
261, 329, 331 ; to conduct, 172-176, 
182-191 ; to the emotions, 335-349; 
practical significance of, 340-349. 
See also the analysis of Chapter VII 
in the Table of Contents. 

French Revolution, mental phenomena 
of its popular excitements, 216. 

Functions, see Expressions and Ex- 
pressive movements. See also Nerv- 
ous system. Brain, Sensitiveness, 
Docility, Initiative, Will. Higher 
and lower nervous functions, their 
distinction, 11, 33, 34. 

Galton, Francis, on mental imagery, 
152 sqq. 

General ideas, see Ideas, general. 

Geometricalideas, as imitative in char- 
acter, 292. 

Goethe, 183, 186. 

Groos, on play, 319, 320. 

Habit, law of, first stated, 66; re- 
stated, 198 ; generalised habits, 68 ; 

2C 



special habits, 69; general relation 
of cerebral habits to consciousness, 
199, 205 ; the process of the forma- 
tion of a habit, 200-203 ; habit and 
association, 203-208 ; habit and per- 
ception, 219-228 ; the assimilation of 
new habits by old ones, 231-235 ; 
consequences for mental life, 235- 
247 ; the habits by which the power 
to discriminate between simultane- 
ous facts is cultivated, 251 sqq. ; our 
social habits and their significance, 
276-298 ; novel habits, how acquired, 
either in a growing brain or in one 
already possessed of habits, 242-244, 
302-332; abnormal habits, 343-348, 

374-379- 

Hallucination, 355. 

Hartmann, Fritz, on orientation, 141, 

Hearing, 135 ; relation of, to our con- 
sciousness of space, 140, 141, 145 ; 
analysis of sensory experience of the 
sense of hearing as an instance of 
psychological analysis in general, 
104-106, 108, III. 

Heliotropism, as an instance of out- 
wardly observable sensitiveness that 
need not be attended with mental 
life, 29. 

Herbartian doctrine of apperception, 
236. 

Idealism, 2 7iote. 

Ideas, general or abstract ideas, nature 
and social conditions of, 285-292 ; 
definition of the term, general idea, 
286; general ideas are in one aspect 
indeed images, 286, cf. 157, 158; but 
this aspect is never dissociated from 
our consciousness of our acts, 286- 
288, cf. 159, 193, 194; and we become 
conscious of the details of our acts, 
especially under social conditions, 
283, 291 ; correct general ideas ex- 
pressible only in terms of fitting 
deeds, 2S9; feelings that accompany 
and colour our consciousness of 
ideas, 288, 289, 290; imitative charac- 
ter, especially of our more elaborate 
scientific ideas, 291 ; ideas and Ian- 



386 



INDEX 



guage, 280-284, cf. 371,372; language 
not the exclusive expression of gen- 
eral ideas, 284 ; ideas as attitudes, 
288 ; as plans of action, 290. 

Images, and Imagery, the general 
nature of mental images indicated, 
148 ; their relation to sensory dis- 
turbances, 148-150, 158 ; differences 
between sensory experiences and 
images, 150, 151 ; the variations of 
mental imagery in different indi- 
viduals, 151-157 ; the types of mental 
imagery, 156 ; the relation of mental 
imagery to higher mental processes, 
157 ; to our motor activities and to 
our conduct, 159-161. 

Imagination, 161. 

Imitation, as a fundamental social 
tendency, 276 ; its relation to the 
tendency to social opposition, 278 ; 
combination and balance of the two 
tendencies as a social ideal, 279 ; 
imitative character of our more 
elaborate general ideas, 287, 291 ; 
numerical and geometrical ideas as 
examples of this fact, 292 ; judgment 
as acceptance or rejection of pro- 
posed imitative portrayals of objects, 
293 ; imitative aspect of processes of 
judgment, 257 ; language and imita- 
tion, 281-284, cf. 372; imitation and 
originality in intellectual life, 361. 

Impulses, insistent, 378. 

Inertia of cerebral processes, and re- 
lation of this inertia to conscious- 
ness, 83. 

Inherited tendencies, see Instincts. 

Inhibition, 70-80 ; definition, 70 ; im- 
portance of, 71; the "set" of the 
brain in relation to, 72; examples 
of in processes of high grade, 73-75 ; 
practical results of the doctrine of, 
75-80. Relation of attention to in- 
hibition, 264. 

Initiative, definition of, 50; signs of 
in general, 38-50 ; many signs that 
appear to be those of spontaneous 
initiative on the part of an organism 
are to be explained as due to sensi- 
tiveness or to docility, 39-42 ; but not 



all such signs can be thus explained 
away, 42 ; illustrations of initiative, 
43-46 ; the term " spontaneity " not 
the best to define such activities, 46 ; 
analogy of such activities to varia- 
tions in the process of heredity, 48, 
49, 301 ; initiative always ciosely 
connected with docility, 51-53, 303 
sqq. ; initiative and self-activity, 53-55, 
330; initiative appears both in the 
intellectual and in the voluntary life, 
55 ; the problem regarding initiative 
restated, 300 sq.; the development 
of our inherited, but at the outset 
very imperfect, instinctive tendencies 
as giving an opportunity for initiative, 
302-306 ; persistence in actions, and 
in the variation of actions, in advance 
of adaptation, as the principal source 
of initiative, 306-319 ; illustrations of 
the results of such persistence, 319- 
330; the persistence as based upon 
tropisms, 331. See also Table of 
Contents, Chapter XIII. 

Inner and outer worlds, contrast of, 
I, 2 sq. See also Mental life. 

Insistent impulses, 378. 

Instincts and inherited tendencies, 34, 
35, 44, 52, 125 ; the tropisms of orien- 
tation and their importance for our 
consciousness of space, 141 sqq. ; 
inherited tendencies at the basis of 
habits, 200 sqq. ; as related to per- 
ceptions, 219 sqq.; the instincts that 
lie at the basis of sociality, 275-279 ; 
inherited tendencies in relation to 
initiative, 302 sqq.; tropisms that 
support initiative, 306-331. Other 
inherited tendencies, 341, j^j'., 375. 

Intellect and intelligence, relation to 
discriminating sensitiveness, 31,32; 
to docility, 37 ; to initiative, 55 ; to 
will, 37, 164, 165, 334, 351 ; to experi- 
ence, 351 ; to the feelings, 164, 165; 
to the attention, 259-262; perception 
in relation to the intellect, 218 sqq. ; 
assimilation in relation to the intel- 
lect, 234 sqq. ; differentiation in re- 
lation to the intellect, 248 sqq.; 
higher intellectual processes, 274- 



INDEX 



387 



298 ; social aspects of intellectual life, 
id.; general ideas, 285 sqq. ; judg- 
ment, 255-257, 292, 293; reasoning 
293-296; practical aspects of the 
intellectual life, 350-363. 

Interest, in its relation to feeling, and 
to the process of attention, 259. 

latrospection as a psychological 
method, 16 ; its uses and limitations, 
17; was not the exclusive method of 
Aristotle, nor of the other greater 
psychologists of former times, 17, 18. 

James, William, on instinct [in human 
beings, 35; on the " specious pres- 
ent," 96; on discrimination, 250; on 
" fringes," 289. See also Preface. 

Judgment, in relation to the general 
process of differentiation, 255-257; 
in relation to the social conditions 
under which the process of judg- 
ment has come to our own con- 
sciousness, 293. 

Language, its development in the 
child, 371, 372; its development as 
indicating its relation to thought, 
280-285 ! its relation to imitation, 
281, 284; it is not exclusively the 
function in which thinking gets ex- 
pressed, 284, 285. 

Loeb, on tropisms, 29, 30, 141, 322, 
327, 330, 331 ; on orientation, 141. 
See also Preface. 

Memory, in relation to the assimilative 
process, 236-241. See also Habit, 
Docility, Association. 

Mental life, general definition and 
character of, i ; relation of this defi- 
nition to philosophical opinions of 
author, 2 ; problems as to the possi- 
bility of studying mental life, 5 sq. ; 
solution of problem indicated, 6 sqq. ; 
relation of mental life to its physical 
expression, 6 sqq. ; general relation 
of mental life to its physical condi- 
tions, 9-II, 15, 59, 64 sqq., 70-78, 
81-83, 100-103, i°7> '^lO! relation of 
mental life to physical conditions in 
case of sensory experience, 117, 121- 



129 ; the organs of sense in their 
relations to mental life, 130-135, 137 ; 
the conditions of spatial conscious- 
ness, 139-146; relation to physical 
conditions in case of mental im- 
agery, 148-150; relation to physical 
conditions in case of feelings, 179- 
182; the relation of the associative 
processes of mental life to their 
physical conditions, 203-208. Clas- 
sification of the processes of mental 
life, 55-57 ; more detailed discussion 
of the signs of mental life, 20-57. 
See also Consciousness, Sensitive- 
ness, Docility, Initiative, Percep- 
tion, Assimilation, Differentiation, 
Will. 

Methods of psychology defined in 
general, 14-19. 

Mob, mental phenomena of the, 216, 276. 

Moral Law, its relation to the processes 
of inhibition, 75-77. 

Motor imagery, and the motor type of 
persons when classified with respect 
to imagery, 156. 

Motor nervous processes, 61-65, 67, 
68 ; their inhibition, 70-75 ; their 
relations to the law of habit, 66, 67, 
198-205; how they come to be repre- 
sented in consciousness, 127; their 
relations to mental imagery, 159, r56, 
157. See also Conduct, Habit, Will. 

Movement, see also Expression and 
Expressive movements. Howwebe- 
come aware of our own movements, 
127, 365 ; of our movements of orien- 
tation, and, through them, of our 
spatial relations, 141-147. For the 
significance of our movements for 
consciousness in general, see also 
Conduct, Perception, Discrimina- 
tion, Will, Tropisms, Motor ner- 
vous processes. 

Multiplicity of conscious states, in 
relation to the unity of conscious- 
ness, 89. See also Consciousness. 

Miinsterberg, Professor Hugo, 3. 

Narrative, why more interesting than 
description, 255. 



388 



INDEX 



Nervous system, its general relation 
to mental life, lo. Distinction be- 
tween nervous processes that are, 
and those that are not, attended by 
mental life, ii, 33, 34, 64, 81, 82; the 
study of the nervous processes that 
accompany and condition mental 
life as one of the methods of psy- 
chology, 15 ; general characterisa- 
tion of the structure of the nervous 
system, 59-61 ; possible nature of the 
transmission of nervous excitation, 
60 ; sensory and motor nervous fibres 
and functions, 61-64; adjustments to 
the environment as determined by 
nervous functions, 64 ; complexity of 
higher nervous processes, 65 ; locali- 
sation, 67; habits of nervous centres, 
68-70; the hierarchy of nervous 
functions, 74 ; inhibition, 70-75. Ner- 
vous conditions of habit and associa- 
tion, 198-203. Inertia of the nervous 
processes, 83. Some phenomena of 
nervous exhaustion, 353-355, 376. 
See also Brain. 

Neurons, or " elements," of the nervous 
system, 58, 59, 305. 

New Testament, positive precepts in, 

n- 

Numerical, general ideas, as imitative 
in character, 292. 

"Old-fashioned winter," the, as an 
example of an idea due to a charac- 
teristic defect of human memory, 
239-241. 

Opposition, as a social tendency, na- 
ture and significance of, 277-279; 
its relation to imitation, 278 ; to ar- 
gument and reasoning, 296 ; to indi- 
vidualism and to the social forms of 
initiative, 326-328. 

Organic sensation, 131, 132; in rela- 
tion to orientation, and consequently 
to the bases of our consciousness 
of space, 141-147 ; in connection 
with the emotions, 169, 337-339; in 
relation to our consciousness of our 
movements, 127, 365. 

Orientation, the functions of, in rela- 



tion to our consciousness of space, 
141-147; reactions of orientation, 
141, 142; their representation in our 
sensory experience, 143 ; all our sen- 
sory experiences related to our acts 
of orientation, id. ; result as to any 
special sensory experience of which 
we become conscious, 144 ; the pri- 
mal experience of extensity, 145; 
consequences for the nature of our 
spatial consciousness, 146, 147. 

Pain, sensations of, 132, 170; feelings 
of, 168-173, 179- See Pleasure and 
Displeasure, Feeling, and the analy- 
sis of Chapter VII in the Table of 
Contents. 

Perversion, of character, 344, 347, 348, 
375.379; of emotion, 343-346. 

Physical conditions of mental life, 
9 ; always include conditions involv- 
ing the nervous system, 10. See 
also Brain, and Nervous System. 
Controllable physical conditions in 
experimental psychology, 18. 

Physical expressions of mental life, 
see also Expressions. Every physi- 
cal expression of mind, direct or in- 
direct, interesting to the psychologist, 
12, 14. The physical signs of the 
presence of mind classified, 20-57. 

Physical facts, the general nature of 
the contrast between physical and 
mental facts, 2 sqq. 

Plasticity as a sign of mind, 32-38. 
See Docility. 

Pleasure and Displeasure, feelings 
of, their signs, 22, 23 ; the traditional 
theory, which regards all feelings as 
of these two types, stated, 167-173 ; 
application of the theory to the case 
of the emotions, 169-171 ; relation of 
pleasure and displeasure to conduct 
according to this theory, 172 ; doubts 
concerning the sufficiency of this the- 
ory, 173-176 ; Wundt's view as to the 
classification of the feelings, 176, 177 ; 
the author's classification, 177 sqq. 
Relation of pleasure and displeas- 
ure to other feelings, on this basis, 



INDEX 



389 



179 sqq. See also analysis of Chap- 
ter VII in Table of Contents. 
Positive and negative precepts, their 
psychological relations to inhibition, 

76, 77- 
Practical applications, of the study 
of the signs of sensory experience, 
^ 27 sq. ; of the relations between the 
various special habits of the brain, 
70; of the facts relating to inhibition, 
75-79; practical results of excessive 
inhibition, 'jj ; the relief from inhibi- 
tions as one use of physical exercise, 
78 ; the practical significance of the 
phenomena of worry, 79, 80; prac- 
tical consequences of the doctrine 
regarding the relations of sameness 
and difference, 94; the significance 
of the proper training of the senses 
for the development of any and all 
grades of conscious life, 127 sq. ; the 
life of the senses not a lower life, but 
an auxiliary of the highest mental 
processes, 128 ; the relations of men- 
tal imagery to conduct, 159 ; need of 
considering, in guiding minds, the 
individual varieties of mental im- 
agery, 162; practical application of 
the doctrine as to the relation between 
perception and conduct, 226-228; of 
the doctrine of assimilation, 236; of 
the doctrine as to the differentiation 
of consciousness, 257; of the doc- 
trine of the social factors of the 
higher forms of docility, 279 ; of the 
doctrine of mental initiative, 331. 
Practical suggestions concerning the 
life of the emotions, 340-349; con- 
cerning the intellectual processes, 
349-351; concerning some intellec- 
tual disorders, 353-355, 358-360, and 
anomalies, 360-362. Considerations 
concerning the will, 364-379. See 
also Conduct, and the analyses of 
Chapters XIV and XV in the Table 
of Contents. 
Present moment of consciousness as 
not indivisible, 84; but as of finite 
length, 95-97 ; what is present to con- 
sciousness at any one moment, 85. 



Psychology, defined, i ; how possible 
as a science, 5 sqq.; essentials of 
all psychological study, 12, 13; how 
related to neurological science, 10- 
13; the methods of psychology, 
13-19; the business of psychology 
restated, 112, 113, 116, 117; psycho- 
logical analysis as a process of sub- 
stitution, 114; as a further carrying 
out of the tendency of the developing 
consciousness towards differentia- 
tion, 230, 257. See also Conscious- 
ness and Mental life. 

Psycho-physic law, 138, 264-273 ; as 
a law regarding the limitations of 
our docility, 269. 

Quiescence, feelings of, 178, 179 ; their 
relation to feelings of restlessness, 
180, 181; of pleasure and displeas- 
ure, 182, 183 ; quiescence as a posi- 
tive state of consciousness, 185 ; the 
quiescent pleasures, 185 ; the rela- 
tively quiescent experiences of dis- 
pleasure, 188, 189; despair as an 
instance of such union of displeas- 
ure and quiescence, 189; relation of 
quiescence to passive attention, 190, 
191, 261 ; the feeling of familiarity 
as a relatively quiescent feeling, 224 ; 
the feeling of confidence (which 
sometimes takes the place of a 
general idea) is of the quiescent 
type, 288. 

Reasoning, nature of the reasoning 
process defined, 293, 294; illustrated, 
295 ; the reasoning process as the 
result of social training, 295, 296; 
its relation to the devices of social 
persuasion, 296. 

Restlessness, feelings of, 178 sqq.; their 
general relation to feelings of quies- 
cence, 179, 180 ; to feelings of pleasure 
and displeasure, 182, 183 ; the four re- 
sulting mixed types of feeling, 179, 
185-189 ; the relation of these mixed 
types of feeling to desire and to con- 
duct, id.; the relation of restlessness 
to the active attention, 190, 330 ; the 



390 



INDEX 



relation of restlessness to the con- 
ditions which determine the persist- 
ence in and the variation of types of 
action, in advance of adaptation, 
306-331 ; resulting theses as to men- 
tal initiative, 318, 331 ; the relation of 
restlessness to desire, 195. 
Rhythm, as an example of the presence 
of unity and variety in consciousness, 
84, 89, 93 ; relation of rhythm to the 
duration of the present moments of 
consciousness, 96. 

Sameness, as a relation always present 
amongst the various states in the 
unity of consciousness, 91 ; sameness 
and difference are inseparable facts, 
91 ; each may help us to become 
aware of the other, 92 ; if sameness 
too much predominates, conscious- 
ness tends to lapse, 89; relation of 
sameness and difference to unity and 
variety, 93 ; relation of consciousness 
of sameness to clearness of conscious- 
ness, 93 ; the consciousness of same- 
ness as a factor in the process of 
thought, 245 ; the consciousness of 
sameness in relation to our power 
to observe objects, 235, 

Science, descriptive, conditions which 
make it possible, 5; problem as to 
how a science of mental states is 
possible, 5-13 ; the relation of scien- 
tific inquiry to the discovery of law, 

43- 

Self, and the consciousness of self, in 
relation to the social conditions 
which determine self-consciousness, 
296-298 ; see also 283-285, 291, and 
the analysis of Chapter XII in the 
Table of Contents, On the self as 
the sole observer of mental states, 
see 1-5, On the character of feelings 
as states referred especially to the 
self, 166, 167. 

Self-activity, see Initiative. 

Sensation, definition of, 122 ; the signs 
of the presence of, 24-28 ; the classi- 
fication of, 129-136; the attributes 
of: intensity and quality, 136-139; 



extensity as an attribute of sensation, 
and its relation to our experiences 
of orientation, 139-147; conscious- 
ness not a mere complex of elemen- 
tary sensations, 120-122. 

Senses, the physiology of the senses, 
16 ; the classification of the various 
senses indicated, 129-136 ; the life of 
the senses plays its part in all grades 
of consciousness, 123-129. 

Sensitiveness, discriminating, as the 
most general sign of the presence of 
mind, 21 ; the forms of this sensitive- 
ness, 22-32; why called discrimi- 
nating, 21 ; relation of sensitiveness 
to habit, and to plasticity or docility, 
27, 36 ; to apparent spontaneity, 39. 
The outer appearance of discrimi- 
nating sensitiveness as not an un- 
questionable sign of the presence of 
mind, 23, 28-30; but of great im- 
portance in the interpretation of 
mind where we know that mind is 
present, 31. The appearance of 
spontaneity often only a phase of 
sensitiveness, 39. The first form 
of sensitiveness: sensory experi- 
ence, its relation to consciousness 
of all grades, 121-129; its classifi- 
cation, 129-136; the attributes of 
sensory experience, 136-147. The 
second form of sensitiveness, mental 
imagery, 148-161. The third form 
of sensitiveness, feeling, 163-195. 
See Table of Contents, Chapters V, 
VI, and VII. 

Sensory Experience, the signs of, 24- 
28 ; the interpretation of these signs 
not always certain, 28-30 ; but these 
signs are of great importance for the 
interpretation of all grades of mental 
life, 30-32. See further the analysis 
of Chapter V in the Table of Contents. 

Sensory nervous processes, 61-65. 

Sequence of states in consciousness, 
see Change and Succession. 

Sexual emotions, 344-346. 

Shinn, Miss M. W., on early habits 
in childhood, 303, 307, 308. 

Sight, 135, 136 ; relation of, to the con- 



INDEX 



391 



sciousness of extensity, 139 sqq. ; to 
perceptive processes, 219 sqq. Im- 
agery of objects once seen, 152 sqq. 

Signs of mental life, see Expression 
and Expressive movements. 

Similarity, see Sameness and Differ- 
ence. 

Simultaneous association, see Asso- 
ciation. 

Simultaneous facts, how the differen- 
tiation of such facts conies to con- 
sciousness, see Differentiation. 

Simultaneous functions, how affected 
in case of the formation of habits, 
202, 203. 

Smell, sense of, 134. 

Social conditions and tendencies which 
determine the higher forms of docil- 
ity, see Imitation, Opposition, and 
the analysis of Chapter XII in the 
Table of Contents. 

Space, consciousness of, its relation to 
our consciousness of sameness and 
difference, 92; its basis in our gen- 
eral experiences of the orientation 
of the organism, 139-147 ; differen- 
tiation of this consciousness of space 
through our experiences of move- 
ment, 252-254; the perception of 
single objects in space, 219-223. 

Spontaneity, appearance of, in the 
nervous functions that attend mental 
life, 12, 22, 39 ; apparent spontaneity 
as often but a phase of sensitiveness, 
39 sq., or of docility, 41 ; but some 
forms of spontaneity not easily thus 
to be explained, 42-46. Spontaneity 
does not mean a lack of causal con- 
nection, 47 ; objections to the use of 
the term, id. ; the term Initiative 
substituted, which also see for further 
facts of spontaneity. 

Static sense, 144. 

Stem, William, on the " present mo- 
ment " of consciousness, 96. 

Storch, on our consciousness of space, 
147. 

Succession, in the stream of conscious- 
ness, 83 ; in relation to the unity of 
consciousness, 95-97; the signifi- 



cance of our consciousness of suc- 
cession as a means of developing our 
habits of discriminating simultaneous 
facts, 248-258. The consciousness 
of succession as related to the con- 
sciousness of difference, 97. See 
also Time. 

Suggestion, negative, in relation to 
inhibition, 76. 

Synthesis, 256, 258. 

Taste, sense of, 134. 

Temperature, sensory experience of, 
133- 

Ten Commandments, the, as examples 
of appeal to inhibitory tendencies, 
77- 

Thinking process, see Thought. 

Thought, in relation to our sensory 
experience, 123-129; in relation to 
the assimilative process, 245-247 ; in 
relation to the process of differentia- 
tion, 255-257 ; in relation to our 
social habits and training, 280-296; 
thought and language, 381-285; 
thought in relation to conduct, 

SSI- 
Time, our consciousness of the present 
moment always a consciousness of 
a finite duration, never of an in- 
divisible present moment, 95-97; 
temporal succession as significant 
for the formation of our habits of 
discrimination, 248-258 ; temporal 
sequence an essential character of 
the stream of consciousness, 83 ; our 
memory of past time affected by 
assimilative processes, 237-241 ; the 
relation of our feelings to our con- 
sciousness of time, 180,181. 
Touch, see Dermal sense. 
Tropisms, of Loeb, general usage and 
definition of the term, 29, 30 (see 
also Preface) ; see also 141, 322, 327, 
330. 331- 

Unity of Consciousness, see Con- 
sciousness and Mental life; the 

unity of consciousness generally 
characterised, 85 sqq. 



392 



INDEX 



Variations in the race as analogous to 
the appearance of initiative in the 
functions of the individual, 48, 301. 

Variety as an aspect of mental life, 
89 ; see also Consciousness, Mental 
life. Change, Differentiation. 

Verbal-motor type of mental imagery 
and of persons when classified with 
respect to imagery, 156, 157. 

Visual type, of mental imagery, 
153 sqq. The variations in visualis- 
ing power from person to person, 
153,154. The relative predominance 
of visual imagery over other imagery 
in the " visualising " type of persons, 

15s. 156. 

Volition, see Will. 

Voluntary acts, as resulting from atten- 
tion, 367-369; in what sense volun- 
tary acts are never, as such, original, 
369-371 ; the growth of language as 
an instance of the development of a 
voluntary function, 371-372. 

Wagner, Richard, 187. 

Weber, and the psycho-physic law, 267. 



Will, in the wider sense, as our total 
consciousness of our activity, and of 
our own attitude towards our world, 
194-196, 364-367; in the narrower 
sense, as the process of the attentive 
selection of one way of action as 
against another, 367-369 ; will in re- 
lation to intellect, 37, 164, 165, 334, 
351 ; the term "will" as of little use 
for purposes of purely psychological 
classification, 196, 334; will in rela- 
tion to feeling in general, 164, 165; 
in relation to the special types of 
feehng, see Feeling. For the prac- 
tical aspects of the life of the will, 
especially in reference to the nar- 
rower use of the term, see analysis 
of Chapter XV in Table of Con- 
tents. 

Worry, phenomena of, 79, 80. 

Wundt, Wilhelm, on the classification 
of the feelings, 176, 177, 180; on the 
association of mental elements, 208, 
209; on the early stages of the de- 
velopment of language, 281 ; on 
apperception, 328. 



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